Curveblog

adios curveblog, hola Viva El Birdos

2005-05-13T14:12:00.001-06:00

look me up at Viva El Birdos, my new home in the blogiverse. it's a bigger, prettier, more interactive site, affiliated with the SportsBlog Nation and fully complicit in that network's many conspiracies and nefarious dealings. please check me out over there; gonna take me a couple of days to get organized and figure out the software, but come monday (no later) i'll be posting away. there's an intro post up there now; check it out, tell your friends, and help me create something over there that cardinal fans will enjoy. again, that URL is: www.vivaelbirdos.com

larry borowsky

eck's appeal

2005-05-12T00:50:00.000-06:00

i watched eckstein’s at-bats closely last night, particularly the strikes thrown early in the count. (if you're just joining us, i've been meditating on card ss's count management --- tuesdy and yest'dy.) he runs the standard singles-hitting-leadoff-guy playbook. when he batted with no one on base (1st, 4th, and 7th) eck had "deep count" at-bats, performing his famous We-Foul-Em™ routine and trying to worm his way on base. got to two strikes on all three at-bats - usually a bad sign - but still reached base two times and worked the count to 3-2 the other time. in the 2d and 5th, hitting with two outs and men on base, he attacked early in the count, putting 0-1 pitches in play both times. in his final at-bat, with runners at 2d and 3d and one out in the 8th, he took the first pitch right down the middle — classic "get me over" fastball — and then never saw another strike and wound up at first with a walk. i’d rather have seen him hack at that first pitch, which had nothing on it and cleaved the fat part of the plate — if nothing else you get a fly ball and another run. i suspect eck would have attacked the next strike had the pitcher obliged him with one . . . .

but why 2d-guess a guy who has just gone 4 for 5 with a walk? as a purely academic exercise — one in no way meant to demean eckstein’s fine performance (nice going david!) — here are a few add’l notes:
* in the top of the first eckstein got ahead 2-0, then took strike one over the outside corner; no complaint, it was a pitcher’s pitch and a wise one to lay off. besides, the pitcher was groping to establish his rhythm; make him throw pitches in that situation.
* in the fifth, with two on and two out, he very clearly was taking all the way on 0-0 — pulled one of those fake square-to-bunt maneuvers, then pulled the bat back and was never ready to swing, which is too bad because the pitch was a fat one. in this instance, no matter; he simply whacked the 0-1 pitch up the middle for an rbi hit.
* in the 7th, with none on and two out, he got ahead 1-0 and again took a get-me-over strike; two outs, i’m thinking take a cut at that thing and see if you can drive it and get yourself into scoring position. he eventually did get a single, then scored on ensuing larry walker double . . . .

why the increasingly unhealthy fixation on david eckstein? i have never disliked him, never thought he was a bad baseball player. i just don’t get him. he’s a shortstop who can’t throw, a leadoff man who doesn’t steal bases and doesn't have particularly impressive obps. it’s said that his full contribution to the team doesn’t show up in the box score, that he does a lot of "little things" (sure, sure; little guy, little things. a natural fit.) he hustles, he scraps, he grits his teeth, and by virtue thereof eckstein makes himself far more valuable than his .700 ops and mediocre (at best) range afield would suggest.

this is a standard myth we tell about certain types of ballplayers, and i’ve always been skeptical of it. we like to tell the same myth about ourselves — ie that effort, tenacity, fearlessness, etc are the main things that separate winners from losers, on the diamond and in the game of life. i never bought that myth either. strip away the myth from david eckstein and you no longer have a player who brings an intangible but significant value-add ("character," for lack of better) to a limited skill set. all you have is the limited skill set.

that’s what i saw in david eckstein when the cardinals signed him — a player who might serve nicely as a part-time player, or as an everyday shortstop batting eighth. but as everyday shortstop and everyday leadoff man? the anchor of the defense and the sparkplug of the offense for a pennant-winning team? mighty big responsibility for a guy who is so average (or worse) in so many respects. yeah, i know he’s got a championship ring and two playoff appearances in four years. i also know that he didn’t get to the majors until age 26, that his glove at short has always been suspect, and that he’s now 30 years old and starting to show signs of slowing down. his run production has faded since his sophomore year, along with his fielding statistics. and since (nothing personal against eckstein) i place little if any value on the "hustle" virtues david brings to the game, i have had concerns about him (like this one) ever since stl signed him.

i still have my concerns, by the way, even tho eckn has looked like a playoff-caliber shortstop through the first six weeks of the year. but i want him to keep doing well and will suffer no shame if he makes all my reservations about him look stupid. mainly, tho, i just want to understand him — how he bears such a sizable load on such a flimsy platform. i look at the guy and i see tony womack without the speed, omar vizquel without the (in his prime) glove; i see a glorified version of bo hart, a player with many limitations and no redeeming areas of excellence. eckstein gets the most out of his ability? that’s a nice story, but i still don’t understand how it makes a .~335 obp (eck’s career mark) a virtue in an aging leadoff man.

i’ll start watching more closely. and i hope eckn shows me.

update: at least one angel fan has bought the myth ex post facto. here's rev halofan in today's post at halos heaven: "After much consideration, it appears that we're most missing Eckstein. . . . . . The offensive anemia continues and it makes me buy all of that sparkplug bullshit they fed us in 2002."

PITCH BY PITCH
david eckstein’s at-bats 5/11/05

AB#1: 1st inn, 0out, 0on
1-0
2-0
2-1 called
2-2 foul
2-2 foul
2-2 foul
3-2
in play F-7

AB#2: 2d inn, 2out, runnr2
0-1 called
in play single

AB#3: 4th inn, 1out, 0on
1-0
1-1 called
1-2 foul
2-2
2-2 foul
3-2
3-2 foul
3-2 foul
3-2 foul
in play single

AB#4: 5th inn, 2out, runnrs1+2
0-1 called
in play single

AB#5: 7th inn, 2out, 0on
1-0
1-1 called
1-2 called
2-2
in play hit

AB#6: 8th inn, 1out, runnrs2+3
0-1 called
1-1
2-1
3-1
walk

eck'n called to a count (cont)

2005-05-11T00:48:00.000-06:00

before i go on with the eckstein ball-strike stuff, i need to clarify something. the point of yesterday’s post wasn’t that eckstein hits worse when he’s behind in the count; all hitters do that. nor was the point to bash eckstein. the point is that eckstein bats from behind in the count — ie, at a disadvantage — more often than any other major-league regular i could find. and far too often for his (and his team’s) own good.

that doesn’t mean he’s a bad hitter; it means he’s a unique hitter. every batter makes decisions about which pitches to swing at; but few if any hitters have a pattern of decisions that resembles eckstein’s. does he know something ev’yone else doesn’t? does he have a skill ev’ybody else lacks? if so, i can’t see it. david’s like every other hitter — good on hitter’s counts, bad on pitcher’s counts. he just hits in more of the latter than the former. a lot more.

in comments here and at the birdwatch, it was suggested a few times that eckstein’s habit of laying off the first strike yields real but hard-to-quantify benefits — ie, he runs deep counts, fouls off scads of pitches, wears out the opposing pitcher, forces him to show all his pitches. these alleged benefits are thought perhaps to accrue to the hitters who come after eck — but whatever these dividends are (if they even exist), they couldn’t outweigh the damage eckstein does to himself by constantly hitting from behind. the deeper the count, the worse eckstein is. once he’s got two strikes on him — and according to the foul-em-off theory, two strikes is a given — eckstein’s obp is just 284. he fell into an 0-2 hole 337 times over the last three years — and battled back to draw a walk just three times. another 291 times he ran a 1-1 count to 1-2; from there he battled back to draw a walk just 8 times.

again, i’m not here to suggest that eckstein is unique in this regard. every hitter sucks when he falls behind in the count; eckstein’s no different. where eckstein is different is in how often he falls behind in the count — significantly more often than other hitters.

most hitters try like hell to stay out of pitcher’s counts. eckstein doesn’t. he puts a first-pitch strike in play only 10 percent of the time — the other 90 percent became 0-1 counts. other contact-hitting leadoff types are far more aggressive. juan pierre for example put an 0-0 strike in play 18 percent of the time; luis castillo, 15 percent; joe cora, 16 percent; ray durham, 19 percent. compared to these players, eckstein faces anywhere from 15 to 30 extra 0-1 counts per season.

of even greater interest is eckstein’s strategy on 1-0. he sees a lot of strikes, as pitchers don’t want to fall behind 2-0 on him with the heart of the order looming. he’s seen 779 1-0 pitches during this period, and 500 of them were strikes; yet eckstein put a measly 79 of those strikes in play — 16 percent. the other 421 strikes erased eckstein’s advantage and evened the count at 1-1. here’s how he compares to our group of hitters from yest’day:

put 1-0 strike in play:
pierre 43 percent
polanco 43 percent
grud’k 41 percent
rollins 31 percent
craig counsell 29 percent
womack 21 percent
cora 21 percent
eckstein 16 percent

when he did put a 1-0 strike in play, eckstein did well — .316 avg, .418 slugging,.743 ops. which surprises nobody since it’s a flippin’ hitter’s count. eckstein should be attacking pitches like these; you’ve got the advantage; you swing the batty-watty. instead, more than five times as often, david runs the count back to even at 1-1, and the at-bats play out to his disadvantage — .282 avg, .358 slg, .692 ops.

as salvo from birdwatch notes, eckstein didn’t sit with the bat on his shoulder for all 421 of those 1-0 strikes; he swung through some and fouled others off. but fouls and swing-throughs can’t explain a gap this large; eckstein’s too far removed from the field. he’s pursuing a deliberate strategy (which many readers obviously are more familiar with than me) of not swinging at the first strike. he thinks it works in his favor to run the counts deep.

he’s wrong. when eckstein puts the ball in play early in the count — 0-0, 1-0, 0-1, or 1-1 — he bats .322 and slugs .427. toss in his hbps on those counts and it adds up to an ops of 778. on all other counts, he’s a .251 hitter with a .654 ops. but — and again, this is my point here — eckstein’s at-bat distribution skews badly to deep counts. of his 1804 plate appearances, only 38 percent were resolved early in the count. the other 62 percent ran long, into ball-strike territory that disadvantages eckstein.

that’s how he chooses to play it; i think he ought to reconsider. the specific count he needs to rethink, imho, is the 1-0 pitch. taking a strike gets him nowhere; his walk rate from 1-1 counts forward is just .053, so he’s not exactly waiting pitchers out. he’s just handing them a free strike. i have to think if he became more aggressive on 1-0, looked for pitches in his happy zone and attacked them, he and the team would profit.

eck'n called to a count

2005-05-10T09:09:00.000-06:00

josh schulz has a state-of-the-shortstops post up today at the birdwatch, comparing renteria v eckstein to date; he accurately concludes: "The Cardinals are getting a slightly better performance out of just a third the salary the Red Sox are paying."

i’ve been meaning to check out how the patek-esque eckstein holds up over a 162-game pounding; went to espn’s three-year splits and found that david does just fine — .266ba/.338obp pre all-star break, .287/.352 post break since 2002. so no worries on that score. but as i trolled around on that page one other thing jumped out at me: david eckstein hits from behind in the count too much. check this out:

ab on 1-0 or 2-0: 93 (6 pct of total ab)
ab on 0-1 or 0-2: 403 (25 pct)

whoa. as you might expect, the results on the top line (.355 avg, .534 slg) shame those on the bottom line (.263 avg, .320 slg). turns out david’s not much of a 1st-pitch swinger either — only 104 at-bats ending on 0-0, though he did well when he put those balls in play (.308 avg, .375 slg). in sum, eck’n has only put the first strike in play (ie, at-bats ending 0-0, 1-0, or 2-0) 197 times, or 12 percent of his at-bats — whereas 42 percent of his at-bats end with eckstein behind in the count (ie, on 0-1, 0-2, or 1-2):

ab on 1st strike: 197 (12 pct)
ab behind in count: 686 (42 pct)

that seemed like an unbelievably skewed distribution of at-bats — and badly in eckn’s disfavor. basically, david hits from behind in the count about four times as often as he hits from ahead. and that ain’t good. i looked at some other hitters as a check, beginning with eckn’s dp partner, mark grud’k:
total ab: 1274
ab on 1-0 / 2-0: 167 (13 pct)
ab on 0-1 / 0-2: 260 (20 pct)
ab on 1st strike: 363 (28 percent)
ab behind in count: 440 (35 percent)

a far more balanced spread. and grud’k is a phenomenal 1st-strike hitter — 388 avg, .554 slg — while he’s pretty much toast once he falls behind in the count — after 0-1, he’s a .636 ops’er (.291 obp, .345 slg). so it makes sense for him to go up there hacking. but it would make sense if eck’n did likewise more often: his ops after falling behind 0-1 is only .634 (.299 obp, .335 slg). unfortunately, eck’n bats from an 0-1 hole in 56 percent of his at-bats.

next comparison is — who else? — last year’s ss, eddie renteria:
total ab: 1717
ab on 1-0 / 2-0: 238 (14 pct)
ab on 0-1 / 0-2: 312 (18 pct)
ab on 1st strike: 493: (29 pct)
ab behind in count: 535 (31 pct)

edgar’s obviously a diff’nt type of hitter, but then we already knew that . . . . how about last year’s leadoff man?
total ab: 1492
ab on 1-0 / 2-0: 128 (9 pct)
ab on 0-1 / 0-2: 312 (21 pct)
ab on 1st strike: 230: (15 pct)
ab behind in count: 594 (40 pct)

womack’s pattern is similar to eckn’s, but it’s still not nearly as skewed. check out their ratios of 1-0/2-0 ab to 0-1/0-2 ab:
womack: 1:2.43
eck’n: 1:4.33
womack may hit from behind in the count too often, but compared to eckstein he is a wizard of ball-strike management.

how do a very good leadoff man’s at-bats shake out? let’s look at juan pierre:
total ab: 1938
ab on 1-0 / 2-0: 261 (13 pct)
ab on 0-1 / 0-2: 495 (26 pct)
ab on 1st strike: 472: (24 pct)
ab behind in count: 739 (38 pct)

again, not nearly as skewed as ecky. nor is jimmy rollins, whose career ab/obp are slightly worse than eck’s:
total ab: 1922
ab on 1-0 / 2-0: 220 (11 pct)
ab on 0-1 / 0-2: 324 (27 pct)
ab on 1st strike: 499: (26 pct)
ab behind in count: 584 (30 pct)

placido polanco has a very balanced allocation:
total ab: 1543
ab on 1-0 / 2-0: 94 (15 pct)
ab on 0-1 / 0-2: 301 (20 pct)
ab on 1st strike: 463: (30 pct)
ab behind in count: 492 (32 pct)

the only remotely close analog i could find (and i only looked at about 10 guys) was alex cora, one of the cards’ potential 2bmen in the offseason market:
total ab: 1140
ab on 1-0 / 2-0: 94 (8 pct)
ab on 0-1 / 0-2: 259 (23 pct)
ab on 1st strike: 213: (19 pct)
ab behind in count: 431 (38 pct)

if i kept looking i might find a few others who share eckstein’s profile in this regard. but it seems safe to say that eckstein takes a very specialized approach to his at-bats — or to put it less delicately, he’s either a weirdo or an outright freak when it comes to hitting. this is not to say that he’s a bad hitter; on the contrary, eckstein appears to have made this strategy work for him. tomorrow i’ll parse what he’s doing — and lodge a request with the little fellah to be more aggressive on one specific ball-strike count.

viva el birdos

busch nostalgia 2: of hague and taylor (cont)

2005-05-09T07:01:00.000-06:00

the cardinals open the 1970 season as if tethered to a bungee cord. they jump off to a 7-2 launch, then fall to 3-12 over the next two weeks; they bounce back with a 10-4 run, only to go slack again at 6-12. on july 1 they fall into a 6-21 dive, but beginning july 30 they recoil and begin a 21-10 skein. to mix the metaphor badly, this is a team with an eating disorder: they stuff themselves full, throw everything up, then repeat the cycle.

this pattern also occurs within individual games — viz. the 11-10 comeback thriller over montreal on august 8 (chapter one of this post). that victory is the cards’ 9th in 10 games; they split a doubleheader the next day, take monday off, and on tuesday august 11 open a three-game series with the san diego padres.

another 2d-year franchise, another ripe compost heap of ballplayers. the pads are the bottom of the 1970 barrel, 10 games worse than their expansion cousins in mtl but, imho, a far more interesting group of guys. they rank among the bottom three teams in nearly ev’y offensive category save two — homers (3d) and strikeouts (1st). their 1st baseman, nate colbert, is a native st louisan, just 24 years old, en route to a 38hr, 150k, .837 ops season. their centerfielder, 26-year-old clarence gaston (later famous as toronto blue jay manager "cito"), is in the midst of an insane career year — a .907 ops and top-10 finishes in avg, hits, slugging, and total bases. the following year his ops will be .650; his career ops in 1026 mlb games is .695. (he strikes out, by the way, 142 times in 1970.) another talented young player, 26-year-old right fielder ollie brown, hits .292 with 23 jacks and an 821 ops. the roster also includes future espn analyst dave campbell; ex-cardinal ed spezio, a spare part on the ’67 and ’68 teams (and father of 2002 world series hero scott spezio); and fred kendall (father of current a’s catcher jason). they will finish 63-99 but aren’t nearly that bad; their pythagorean ratio projects to 70 wins. the 1970 cards, by the way, are similar underperformers, finishing five games off their pythagorean pace.

the series opener on august 11 pits earl wilson against poor nelson briles, whose 1970 season could serve as a tombstone for the 1960s "era of the pitcher." the 26-year-old righthander had racked up 48 wins over the previous three years, adding a complete-game world series win in 1967. he entered 1970 with a career era of 3.07, but as play begins tonight, he’s at 6.71 on the season — and that includes a complete-game shutout in his previous start, vs the mets.

nellie’s back up to 7.18 after this evening’s two and a third ineffective innings. he bequeaths a 5-1 deficit to the bullpen, which improves it to 8-1 by the seventh-inning stretch. the cardinals chip away for two in the bottom half; torre homers leading off the bottom of the 8th, and then brock doubles home two runs with two outs to make it a game again at 8-6. with the bullpen depleted by briles’ short start and the sunday doubleheader, schoendienst trots out a familiar face — harry parker, the starting pitcher from chapter 1 of this tale. it is his second big-league game, and it goes just as badly as the first; pitching just two days after his 5-1/3-inning start on aug 8, he puts a man on, gets two outs, but just just can’t close out the inning, yielding a walk and two singles to lengthen the gap to 10-6.

normally we — my family, i mean — would have departed by now. games started at 8 p.m. in those days, and it’s now past 10 o’clock and the outcome is pretty much decided. but my cousin josh is in town, visiting from long island, and nobody has to be at school in the morning; what the hell. we do leave our seats, per custom, and stake out standing room at the back of the section, the better to beat the traffic on highway 40 when the game ends. (traffic? paid attendance is but 16,734 . . . . ) a former cardinal, ron willis, is on the mound for the bottom of the 9th; he made 113 appearances for the 67-68 squad. my man joe hague leads off with a hit; attaboy joe, never say die. allen forces him at second, but comes around to score on singles by torre and cardenal. the tying run’s now at the plate in the person of mike shannon, whose career has literally reached the end — he will play his last ballgame tomorrow. plagued by some sort of non-baseball-related malady (wasn’t it his liver or something? . . . . no seriously), shanny hasn’t hit a homerun all season. but sd manager preston gomez, taking no chances, calls a righthander out of the pen, ron herbel. he retires shannon on a force for the second out but then walks ed crosby to bring the winning run to the plate.

the pitcher’s spot is due up, and schoendienst has already used most of his bench, including all the left-handed bats. his best remaining option is carl taylor, a 26-year-old outfielder struggling through a disappointing season. for the pirates in 1969 he hit .348 in 221 at-bats, but he’s at just .257 for st louis so far in 1970, with five home runs. meanwhile the player the cardinals traded for taylor — dave giusti — is having a banner season as a relief ace, 9-3 with 26 saves. (giusti will save 140 more for the bucs over the next seven years and earn a world series ring in 1971.) and taylor’s half-brother, boog powell, is in the midst of his mvp year for the orioles.

basically, everybody associated with carl taylor is doing well in 1970 except for carl taylor. but this is carl taylor’s night. with brock on deck (4 for 5 on the game) herbel doesn’t mess around with taylor; he throws him a strike and carl strokes it toward the left-centerfield bleachers. the flight is the exact opposite of hague’s high-apex longball against montreal; this one rides flat, like a stone skipping over water. i even remember thinking at the time that it didn’t look like much of a cut; he didn’t follow through on it, like the little league coaches said you’re supposed to. good rip or no, the ball carries — i keep my eye on it every inch of the way, as kids tend to do, rather than watching the fielder to see how it is going to play. based on the swing and the trajectory, i’m anticipating an out — but damned if doesn’t go over the wall! delerium ensues, of the type can only afflict boys who are up way past their bedtime on a summer night. none of us watch taylor round the bases or touch the plate. cousin josh, who doesn’t even like baseball that much — and to the extent he does, likes the mets — prances around in a display of jubilance i would term "simian," by which i mean it is uncannily similar to human behavior. my brother and i, both younger, follow his lead; even my dad can’t help but have some of the happy ape in him drawn out by that hit. it’s a grand slam, another walkoff homerun, another 11-10 win for the cardinals — and an experience the four of us never fail to recall whenever circumstance brings us together.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

these two 11-10 games from 1970 — and the team’s season-long hot-cold-hot-coldness, its consistent inconsistency — strike me, in long retrospect, as harbingers for the whole decade to come at busch stadium. the cards aren’t going to pitch, the games sooth-said, and they’re going to look awful a lot of the time; nearly every good play the cardinals make will be undone by a corresponding bad one, and vice versa. the decade of manic depression is coming. when they’re down they’ll be waaaayyyy down, but when they’re up it will be intoxicating. a little unreal, perhaps, and a little dangerous; just when things get good, you’ll know they’re about to come crashing back down to earth.

but they’ll never hit bottom; they’ll always bounce back. the bungee cord’ll see to it.

STL PITCHING TREND LINE
at busch stadium

1966: 3.11 team era, 2d in nl
1967: 3.05 team era, 2d in nl
1968: 2.49 team era, 1st in nl
1969: 2.94 team era, 1st in nl
1970: 4.06 team era, 6th in nl
1971: 3.85 team era, 11th in nl

as always, gotta acknowledge retrosheet for their great data and box scores.

viva el birdos

busch nostalgia 2: of hague and taylor

2005-05-08T07:46:00.000-06:00

some people write memoirs about the wars they fought in, the lovers they bedded, the scientific knowledge they pursued and contributed to humankind. i write about the baseball games i’ve seen. at busch stadium.

this is 2d part in the series; read part 1 here and the part 1 addendum here. those posts, and this one, made possible by retrosheet, where box scores never get yellow and brittle and krinkled up.

it’s august 1970. busch stadium is four years old, i am seven, and the cardinals are suffering through their worst season in more than a decade. a seven-game losing streak heading into the all-star break drops them from 3rd place, 4 games back, to fifth place, 9.5 back. they open the 2d half of the season 2-10, and late july finds the cardinals 16 games under at 41-57, dead last in the nl east — behind even the montreal expos, a 1½ -year-old expansion franchise.

hard to believe that less than two years ago the cardinals were coasting to their second consecutive pennant. but this lineup bears no resemblance to that of the invincible 67-68 team. the #3 and #4 hitters from that team left after the cards’ loss to detroit in the ’68 world series — roger maris into retirement, cha-cha cepeda to atlanta in a trade for joe torre. then, just days after the 1969 regular season ended, two more everyday players were sent packing — curt flood and tim mccarver to philadelphia for richie allen, in the transaction that heralded the death of the reserve clause.

the departure of flood and mccarver, up-the-middle anchors for all three of stl’s 1960s pennant winners, has changed the look and feel of the team. erstwhile pitching-and-defense specialists, the cardinals have become sluggers, led by the 28-year-old allen and 29-year-old joe torre. both drive in 100 runs in 1970 (the cards’ first such pairing in one lineup since the 1964 championship team), while torre and brock give the cardinals two 200-hit men, the first time that has happened since 1963 (musial’s last season). allen’s 34 homers are the most by a cardinal since musial’s 35 in 1954, and the most until jack clark’s 35 in 1987. the ’70 cardinals will pile up 744 runs, the highest-scoring lineup since 1963. no cardinal team will outscore them until 1985.

the reverse pattern holds, unfortunately, for the cards’ pitching. they will allow 747 runs in 1970, the most since 1955 — and a figure not to be topped for 28 years, until 1998. think that through again: the 1970 staff is the most scored-upon in a 43-year period between 1955 and 1998 — the most porous staff, essentially, for the entire 2d half of the 20th century. just two years earlier, the cards yielded only 472 runs — nearly 40 percent fewer — while leading the league in era; they led the league again in ’69 while allowing only 540 opposition runs to score. but steve carlton’s 1970 era is up a run and half over 1969; nellie briles’ is three runs a game higher, and even gibson is less sharp, giving up a run a game more this year than last. he’s still gibson — will win his 3d cy young this yr with a 23-7 mark, 23 cgs and 274 ks — but he won’t be throwing 13 shutouts as he did just two seasons ago.

by the morning of august 8 the cards have pulled themselves back into fifth, ahead of montreal and only 8 games under .500 (51-59). they are three games into a 16-game homestand that will bring five teams (nearly half the league) to town. montreal is here now; the cards beat them in the series opener last night (gibson’s 15th w) and on this saturday afternoon will start a 22-year-old righthander named harry parker, pitching in his major-league debut. he’s facing mike marshall, 0-5 with a 4.25 era. these are the expos in all their reeking expansionness — one good player (rusty staub), one colorfully named one (coco laboy), and 23 guys named staehle and gosger and boccabella to fill out the other 23 uniforms. triple a-ish players; but then, parker’s a triple a pitcher, and the expos have at him. they bruise him for 4 in the third to go up 4-1; the cards get the 4 right back in their half to regain the lead. it’s still 5-4 when parker departs with two on and one out in the sixth; he stands to earn the victory. but pinch-hitter mack jones (now there’s a good name for an expansion player) clouts a chuck taylor pitch into the alley to knock in parker’s two baserunners, then scores on a squeeze play. again the cardinals answer immediately, tying the score at 7s with two runs in the bottom of the 6th. there it remains until the top of the 9th, when — with two out and nobody on — the ’spos string together four singles off taylor and al hrabosky and harvest three runs.

claude raymond (3-6), mtl’s fourth pitcher, comes on to close out the game. but twice already this afternoon the cards have counterpunched immediately following mtl rallies, and they make like to do it one more time. leron lee leads off with a walk and jose cardenal bats a single up the middle; raymond seems to redeem himself by picking cardenal off first, but then he throws the ball away in the ensuing rundown and everyone’s safe, men at 2d and 3d. brock chases home one with a groundball, and a second scores on a single by pinch-hitter carl taylor (chuck’s brother). that makes it 10-9 montreal and brings rightfielder joe hague to the plate.

hague reached the majors a generation ahead of his time; if he played today he’d be a moneyball exemplar. his strengths are plate discipline (walk rate of .129 in a very short career) and pop (career .160 iso power); his career secondary average of .300 dwarfs his career BA (.239). but this is 1970; bill james is still in the army or wherever, and nobody owns a pocket calculator, much less a computer. we don’t have fancy metrics with which to evaluate baseball players; don’t need ‘em either, goddammit. we’ve got batting average, hr, and rbis — what the hell else does anyone need to know? joe hague starts the day at .274 with 8 hr and 37 rbi, not the kind of numbers that get a 26-year-old borderline prospect established as a big-leaguer . . . . but hague’s obp is .364 (if they only knew!) and he’s slugging .421 — a 786 ops, not at all bad for the day. he will finish the year with 5.58 runs created per 27 outs, an offensive winning percentage of .604 . . . .

ah well, like i said, it’s 1970 and nobody cares. we care only that hague is 2 for 5; that he doubled home the cardinals’ 7th (and tying) run in the 6th inning; and that another double would tie it again. hague seems to oblige, launching a raymond pitch on a high, nine-ironish flight toward the right-field corner. i can still picture the arc — "phat air," as they say (or did last month) on espn2. staub races that way but finally runs out of room; it’s over the wall, and the high-scoring, poor-pitching cards have an unbelievable 11-10 victory. this is the first walkoff homerun i have ever witnessed, the first thrilling bottom-9th comeback . . . . .for all i know they are the first such events in the history of the cardinals, even the history of major-league baseball, so shocking do they seem to me. i can’t shut up about it; for the next couple days every kid on the block has to hear me recap the 9th inning, while my older brother (who had a little league game or something that day and missed the excitement) lurches back and forth between jealousy and embarrassed disgust. i don’t care; let him suffer. to my 7-year-old mind it seems imperative to milk the experience now, because what are the odds i’ll ever attend another game as remarkable as that? probably never see the like again as long as i live. . . . . .

. . . . . or maybe i’ll see it happen all over again three days later. of which, more asap.

viva el birdos

neil and pray

2005-05-07T04:57:00.000-06:00

NEIL ALLEN MEMORIAL RELIEVE-ME-NOT TICKER
updated daily

stl bullpen since izzy inj'y 4/26:
19.2ip, 30h, 18r/er, 15w, 18k
8.24 era, 2.29 whip
1-3, 3sv, 2bs
games played: 10
games pen scored on: 6
stl record: 5-5

LOOGYs since izzy inj'y:
9ip, 18h, 13r/er, 10w, 8k
13.00 era, 3.11 whip
stl in one-run games: 2-3

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

posted in game thread at padre blog gas lamp ball last night:
"I LOVE THE CARDS BULLPEN! CARDS BULLPEN FOR MAYOR!"
by bktabinga on Fri May 06, 2005 at 10:45:03 PM EST

viva el birdos

reyes of aaa

2005-05-06T16:57:00.000-06:00

very fav'able first-hand scouting report of anthony reyes at john sickels' blogsite, minor league ball. a taste: "Reyes seems to be pitching with supreme confidence right now. He didn't seem challenged or rattled at anything Omaha threw at him. Not that Omaha has a any good bats, but he still looked very strong. He challenged hitters with his good fastball, and his changeup looked really sharp."

viva el birdos

source spot

2005-05-06T14:44:00.000-06:00

cardnilly has an interesting theory about the sanders-for-byrnes rumor: "I just finished re-reading Moneyball, and this reminds me a bit of the Rincon trade machinations detailed in the book. I think Billy's using these discussions both as a smokescreen and as a way of establishing Byrnes' value to whatever sucker he eventually deals with. Sure seems like the Yanks could use him out there a bit more than we could (and probably the Cubbies, too...). I think Byrnes gets dealt, but not to us."

it's an excellent take and i hope scott is right, as i see no profit in the deal for stl. but notice how mycheal urban (the a's mlb.com beat writer) sources the rumor: "According to a credible out-of-town source whose information was substantiated by a National League scout . . . ." the 'n.l. scout' is prob'y the cards' guy, eyeballing byrnes for jocketty, and the other source is an 'out-of-town' guy --- ie not beane or a surrogate. still true that the a's may only be posturing, but the cards appear to have serious interest. and that's noteworthy.

then again --- what if the 'out-of-town' guy is jocketty himself? maybe walt's engaging in some puffery of his own, trying to build a market for sanders . . . ?

byrne-ing question

2005-05-06T10:16:00.000-06:00

athletics nation is still awash in reg-sanders-for-eric-byrnes talk. let's listen:

bigelephant: if its a choice between reggie vs bonehead its really no contest- i'ii take reggie everytime. lets not embellish byrnes' worth here. reggie is 37, with 257 career homers who will play a steady but not spectacular LF/RF. one interesting note; reggie seems to hit better against righthanded pitching. reggie can be plunked into the 4 hole and let him swing away....i say do it.

china bob: No on Sanders. too old, no future, a srike out machine

a’s exile in atlanta: While you can't help but love Byrnes attitude, let's face it, he's just not very good at the plate or, spectacular body-beating plays aside, very good in the field either. You just can't have a corner outfielder in the team who can't hit right handed pitching. And I just can't stand to see Byrnes coming to the plate with two men on and two out any more. You KNOW he's going to pop it up.

herb washington: Byrnsie's not in their future anyway, so I guess it's more of a question: Do you want to see Byrnes for the next 5 months or Sanders for the next 5 months? From me, there's not much excitement to either proposition.

swishersweet: I agree, the question is really byrnes for the next five months or Sanders, and you know what, we have all seen Reggie Sanders take plenty of ABs, Id rather watch byrnes and hope that those pop ups start leveling out a bit.

landsfords1: Don't get me wrong, I'd hate to see Byrnsie go. I love the guy's all out 100% hustle and enthusiasm. What frustrates me most is his fielding has taken a noticible step backwards this season and he's never been a great fielder to start. The guy takes routes to fly balls like he's got ants in his pants. . . . Yes, Byrnes can make the spectacular play every once in a while, but for every successful diving catch, there's 4 blown or nearly blown routine plays.

gaelan: Eric Byrnes is not good. Getting an actual major league player who can field will be an upgrade all on its own. Sanders isn't great either but at least he won't cost the team anything in the field.

melody: Can you fill me in as to why the A's in general [and 50% of the fans] want Byrnes gone so badly?

mcfood: Half of the fans love his wavy blonde hair, and the other half can't stand the way he runs semi tippy-toed.

viva el birdos

this that other

2005-05-06T04:44:00.000-06:00

stl bullpen since izzy inj’y
8.27 era, 2.39 whip
16.1ip, 25h, 15r/er, 14w, 14k, 4hr

LOOGYs since izzy inj’y
12.86 era, 3.29 whip
7ip, 14h, 10r/er, 9w, 4k

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

i came up with one possible reason why the cardinals might want to trade reggie sanders for eric byrnes: byrnes destroys left-handed pitching. last year he was .344/.406/.599/1.005 against them; over the last three-plus years he’s gone .311/.362/.542/.904.

then i looked up the cards’ splits this year, and the theory went down the toilet. vs lhp, the cards are at 269/333/478/811; vs rhp they’re a more anemic 259/330/414/744. in other words, they don’t need help against left-handed pitchers; t'other way around, they need a left-handed hitter who can punish righties.

another possibility — the cards are trying to free up payroll space for a decent relief pitcher. byrnes is $2 million cheaper than sanders. . . . . but as much as we need the bullpen help, that's a pretty thin rationale for breaking up a lineup in the first week of may. apparently this is no idle rumor tho; whether or not the trade goes down, it appears that the cardinals are at least considering it.

which tells you something about how jock views the ballclub.

here’s what some a’s fans think of the idea:

* robb: Come on all pitchers have to do is throw breaking balls to byrnsie to get him out. While he is fast and has a good hustling attitude, he is a OVERATED fielder and makes a lot of terible plays. I will admit he makes some amazing plays but overall hes just not a good fielder. Plus Sanders is that kind of veteran mentality we need.

* grover: Beane would have to be out of his freakin’ mind. Why would the A's trade a younger, less expensive player AND a prospect for a 37 year old part time player? It makes no sense.

* andeux: Byrnes has just really annoyed me this year. I just have this feeling that, while he is capable of some hot streaks, we've seen the best he has to offer, and it's not quite good enough. Sanders is old, but has remained durable and healthy over the past few years, and could really stabilize the lineup.

btw, it appears cardnilly was onto this about 12 hrs before any of us other card’nalists noticed. if you haven’t checked out the nilly yet, i recommend that you do so without delay. dude is plugged in.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

the cardinals are 13th in the national league in on-base pct (.331). the san francisco giants — sans bonds — are first (.354). sf sans has also outslugged st louis .431 to .427 and owns a 138-130 edge in runs scored (about .30 r/g).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

david eckstein ranks 6th among nl shortstops in range factor, at 4.92 ppg. he is 15th in zone rating, fielding 78.9 percent of the balls hit through his position. eckstein’s replacement in anaheim, o cabrera, ranks 7th among al shortstops in zone rating (82.8 pct) and 7th in range factor (4.74 ppg).

as a team the cardinals rank 10th in the nl in der, at .7094.

pen pals

2005-05-05T07:16:00.000-06:00

since izzy’s injury eight games ago, the cardinal bullpen has yielded 30 baserunners and 10 runs in 14 1/3 innings — 6.28 era, 2.09 baserunners per inning. phew. those numbers are slightly misleading — aside from journell and cali, the relievers have pitched pretty well. and they’ve done their primary duty, ie hold leads — they’re 3 for 3 in save situations.

but how might we be feeling if not for that 7-run rally monday night? had the cards lost that game, it would have dropped them to 2-4 post-izzy, with the bullpen breaking down in two of the four losses. then a close call in tuesday’s win, nearly blowing a 4-0 ninth-inning lead, and another pounding last night . . . . . it’d feel different. more like an urgent problem.

and in fact it is an urgent problem — one temporarily masked by a flukey rally and a weak division. also by a heroic run from the starting pitchers: they have eased the burden on the weakened pen by throwing at least 6 innings in every start since the injury. their line in that span: 55 2/3 innings, 42 hits, 11 walks, 39 ks, 2.75 era, 0.96 whip. and they're doing it without high burnout risk: avg pitches over those eight starts is only 98, more than acceptable. the bats have picked up some slack, too: .300 / .356 / .459 / .815 since izzy went down, scoring 42 runs (5.25 / game). this is what good teams do; one pair of oars goes out, the others pull harder.

but if the cards are serious about winning a championship — beating great teams under october pressure — they're gonna have to have some new oars out there in the bullpen. and no, bill pulsipher and cal eldred were not the ones i had in mind. i was thinkin’ maybe this guy . . . . . or him . . . . i might even take a flyer on this dude, who keeps the ball down if nothing else . . . . . and he still throws hard and seems to have got his career back on track; yeah i know ex-cub, but they could do worse . . . . there’s always you-know-who, but check out the homers-per-inning; scares me . . . . he comes cheap and can sop up innings: over his last 177 ip (back to 2001), 160 hits vs 150 strikeouts, era 3.76, whip 1.33 . . . .

more on the 'pen today at get up baby

btw, per my LOOGY thing a few days back: since the inj'y the cards are 2-2 in one-run games; the LOOGYs have thrown 5.1 innings and yielded 6 runs (5 by cali), 8 hits, and 7 walks . . . (thank you, day by day database)

viva el birdos

quixotic questec

2005-05-04T09:06:00.000-06:00

sigh . . . . despite our best efforts (see today's earlier post), sabernomics has gone and done it: a skipper-by-skipper study of walk-strikeout-ratio differential betw questec and non-questec ballparks. it's out there now, so read up in today's s'nomics post. for those in haste, here's the cliff notes version: data show barrister la russa to be perhaps the most active and effective dugout lobbyist in mlb.

which conclusion will shock no baseball fan --- duncan / la russa scratch n claw for ev'y pitch, ev'y inning, ev'y game. (misspent energy, many of us stl fans think, but hey he's the genius . . . ) nor can any honest one of us dispute sabernomics' summation: "Tony LaRussa has no moral high ground to accuse any other manager for influencing the game through umpires."

this inquiry's only fault lies in its pertinence. moral high ground? la russa is a lawyer and a baseball manager ---- a bigger stranger to the moral high ground has never lived. the mhg is worth less than nothing to him, worth far less than a single chris carpenter curveball six inches outside that gets called a strike in some midseason game. to get that one lonely call, la russa (like most successful mgrs/coaches in pro sports) would gladly muck through the foulest moral swamp all season. and be proud of his achievement afterward.

that doesn't bother me. what bothers me is, say, a congressman who sells out every principle he campaigned on to pick up one swing vote on a critical bill --- and then impugns the morals of the people who voted the opposite way. what bothers me is a moral high ground that can only be reached by trampling over gays and poor people. (see lerwin2's comment to previous post for more in this vein . . .)

call it rent-seeking, gamesmanship, whining, whatever --- on a baseball diamond, at least, it has its place.

how cheat it is

2005-05-04T00:21:00.000-06:00

sabernomics still hacked off at la russa for tlr’s suggestion that the braves get all the calls. it’s to the point that a ball-strike study using questec data may be in the offing — idea being (i think) to gauge the differential in ball-strike ratios betw questec and non-questec ballparks . . . . . chrissakes, the man was only venting after a f’ustating loss — stupid and ill-advised remarks not worthy of such an elaborately appointed response. please, sabernomics, don’t waste your talent; don’t be dumping those kinds of data sets and matrices on an innocent world.

of greater interest to me is the confluence betw la russa’s pout and jeff van gundy’s similar lament vis-vis whistles blown in the nba playoffs. like la russa, he implies that game officials have ceded authority to the opposing team’s management — and gundy took it even further by suggesting complicity on the part of the league office. am i imagining it, or do coaches and players these days (in all sports) more brazenly accuse umps/refs of lacking basic integrity? can’t help but think this is somehow related to wider societal perceptions that everything’s biased or flat-out rigged — the presidential election, the stock market, the media, the tax code, the courts . . . . . anyone have their suspicions about whether competition in those arenas takes place on the up and up? and if you do (as you should), mightn’t you start to view ev’ything through jaundiced eyes?

we’ve long heard these types of black musings from fans and columnists — "it’s all a big set-up to maximize the tv ratings; the league favors the big-name players and teams; bow wow wow . . . . ." but i can’t recall having heard coaches embrace — with such defiance, such impunity — the suggestion that the fix might be in. and there’s a good reason coaches usually won’t go there: when he questions the officials’ integrity, a coach discredits the very thing he does for a living; he casts himself and all of us as dupes. rants like those are simultaneously self-serving ("it’s not my fault we lost; the game was rigged") and self-destructive.

so sabernomics was right — cram it, tony. now if s’nomics will just cram the questec ball-strike goose chase . . . . . .

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

i’m gonna be moving in the near soon to one of those big shiny baseball blogglomerates. pretty geeked about it, as the new site will look better, be more interactive, and provide a more visible platform for the daily upchucking of trenchant insights — mine and whoever else’s. gonna have a new name too — "viva el birdos," a nod to cha-cha n hoot’s ’67 world champs.

they’re still grading the e-lot and raising the cyberbeams; when all’s ready i’ll post the forwarding address. until such time, will be on duty here doing bidness per usu’l.

another 9th, another 7

2005-05-03T09:10:00.000-06:00

no sooner do we conjure up 7-run 9th-inning rallies here in the curveblog than the cardinals repeat the feat. their late comeback from a six-run deficit ranks as the greatest 9th-inning uprising in franchise history — which means "roger freed game I," in which they erased a five-run deficit in the 9th, must have held the honor heretofore. i didn’t know that when i wrote the post.

the game also stirred memories in redblogland — bad memories. throughout the long rally, posters there kept referring to something called "the mother’s day massacre" — a game from 2002 that i had completely forgotten about. anybody remember this?

reds fans sure do. and it haunted every hit, run, and error in the top of the 9th last night, making the experience all the more painful and surreal to them — a recurring nightmare. it gives me no pleasure to read, ex post facto, the real-time grief of great fans as they watched their tradition-rich team go to pot. . . . .

JD at the red reporter had opened his game thread with this prayer: "All that matters tonight, and for the next two days, is heart. How bad do the Reds want to turn things around? How much do they want to avoid playing out the string for the next five months? . . . Let's go Reds. Give us a reason to hope."

such (ie reason to hope) had already departed before the first pitch for Falls City Beer, who posted at the redszone: "Honest question here: will you feel better if the Reds sweep this series? Will that change your opinion? I only ask because I have no hope that even a sweep of the Cards in this series will make a bit of difference."

in the 5th over at red reporter, a reader calling himself paul householder idly observed: "The Reds are currently down 1-0 in the bottom of the 5th. I predict that the Reds will get to Carpenter for three runs by the end of the 6th. Miley will send one of the following out to try to hold the lead: Joe Valentine, Ben Weber, or David Weathers. Some combination of the above will blow the lead, and Graves will give up the winning run in the top of the 9th via a home run."

memo to householder: please e-mail me whatever you’re betting at pimlico today.

in the bottom of the 8th, with the reds leading 9-3, Super Barry 11 entered the reds zone and declared gleefully: "I KNEW that if I skipped my bio final exam review session to watch the game, then the Reds would lose miserably, because that's just my luck. So I went to the review session, missing almost the entire game. But look at what I got to come home to!! YAYEE!!"

"I'd say you better be doing some serious studying the rest of the year then," quoth redsfan 30.

Virginia Beach Reds said: "First 'blowout' win of the season. Boy, only took a month." redsfan 30: "We really needed a night like this for our morale. A win will help things around here. May not make the Reds instant playoff contenders, but it will help the tone of things."

at red reporter, paul householder was backing off his earlier forecast of doom: "OK. Even David Weathers could not blow a six-run lead." but they were still edgy in the redszone as the 9th got underway:
Fullboat: "6-run lead — I'm o.k. with bringing in Graves in now." — but after the leadoff walk to molina: "Why is graves not out there?"
KronoRed: "Because we want to win?"
redsfan30: "Not a save situation." — and, after eckstein’s single loaded the bases: "Guess what guys....It is now a save situation."
Fullboat: "He can't blow a 6 run lead can he?"
KronoRed: "Weathers is sure trying to."

after cedeno’s whiff, a sigh of relief from MWM: "I'm very glad [Aurilia] played well tonight. He contributed significantly to the win and I'll take that any time he can give it." and an immediate rebuke from Raisor: "Do NOT tempt the baseball gods with calling this game a ‘win’ before the last out. Thou shallt receive one billion negative points if the Reds lose."

two batters later, after edmonds’ homer made it 9-8:
Raisor: "I blame MWM."
redsfan30: "good lord."
Virginia Beach Reds: "I spoke to soon. Oh my gosh."
Raisor: "I guess it's a save situation now."
Rosie Red: "Super Barry, go back to the library! Quick!"

after mabry’s dinger:
Reds Fanatic: "I can't believe it. I don't know how we will ever recover from this."
wheels: "Oh. My. Dear. Lord."
Mitri: "oh man oh man oh man"
Raisor: "MWM, prepare for a billion million negative points." `
MWM: "This is the single worst loss I can remember in my years of following the Reds."
Mutaman: "I've been a reds fan for a long, long time. This may be the low point."
Super Barry: "I'm sorry!!! I HAD to come home!! The review session was over, and I was too scared to walk all the way to the library in the dark!!! I'm sorry, guys!!!"

it stung no less at red reporter:
Greg in Atl: "I've been following the Reds for 38 years, and I can't remember an uglier loss. More painful yes, but not uglier."
pw: "The season's over, if not for the Reds, then for me. I'm not wasting any more time watching this crap."
jgoodfri: "Goodbye, cruel world, it's over... How many think we'll ever see the Reds have a seven run comback in the 9th against the Cardinals in our lifetime?"

this at redszone:
ws1990reds: "You know what brought back the Cardinals? PUJOLS. He busted his ass down the first base line on that grounder, and there isn't a single Reds player that would have done that."

at red reporter, JD ref’nced paul householder’s cynical 5th-inning prediction of doom: "I laughed when I saw it. And then it came true. . . . . . And yet I was still stunned."

i give the last word to redmachine2003, who summed up in redszone: "This was a very sad game."

devil 2, cardinals 0

2005-05-02T09:22:00.000-06:00

these are the games that try SABRgeeks’ souls — 10 hits, five walks, but only one run. by rights the cardinals should have tallied four times yesterday, the braves but once; and whether we credit smoltz for pitching with grit or blame the st louis hitters for swinging impatiently, something seems to have gotten lost in the translation between statistics and outcomes. the cards outhit the braves and outpitched them; therefore they won the game, right?

well no, they didn’t; nor is it necessarily true that anything got lost in the translation. run-scoring models are not deterministic; they only project probabilities. some days 10 hits and 5 walks gets you 1 run, and some days it gets you 7 — four is the fat part of the bell curve, and it’s all supposed to even out over time.

but does it? how often does the scoreboard get it "wrong"? if, in every game, both teams scored the number of runs they "should," how many outcomes would be reversed? for the cardinals and braves, it has happened twice in two days: the cardinals "should" have won saturday 4-3 and yesterday 4-1. on friday night the teams got it right: each side hit its expected run output on the nose, and perfect justice reigned on the scoreboard as it does in heaven.

thankfully heaven doesn’t control all the outcomes; that would make for an incredibly boring sport. but how often does the devil overturn the outcome that heaven ordains? one game in 10? one in 3?

only one way to find out . . . . i’m a-gonna track, season-long, the cardinals’ won-loss record per heaven. it’ll take me a few days to go back through all the april boxes and get up to date, but once i get current i’ll keep it so for the rest of the year — despite having many, many more important things i ought to be spending my time on. (an example of the devil’s messin’ w/ my outcomes. . . . ) i’ll use three run-scoring models to determine how heaven intended each game to turn out:
1. bill james’ runs created tech-1
2. tangotiger’s linear weights ratio
3. a brand-new model introduced at lookout landing that correlates runs scored to OPS: call it "OPS runs"

those of you who want the formulas should click on the links directly above; i’m not going to get into them here. for each game, i’ll plug the raw data — hits, walks, total bases, steals, etc etc — into all three formulas to derive expected run outputs for both the cardinals and their opponent. if all three formulas agree that the devil did his business and tipped the win to the "wrong" team, i’ll so note — but if only one or two of the formulas conflicts with reality, reality trumps. at the end of the year we’ll see how often it happened and whether the cards came out ahead or behind on the deal.

as for now, we can say the devil owes st louis a couple of games — the two he stole from them saturday and sunday. and with that s.o.b. afoot, what SABRgeek’s soul wouldn’t suffer some pangs?

walk in the carp

2005-05-01T17:11:00.000-06:00

t larussa’s postgame bitching about the vanishing strike zone saturday raised some eyebrows (and irishes) in bravesblogland. in a post titled cram it, tony, sabernomics writes: "I’m just going to come out and say it: I don’ t like Tony LaRussa. I think he’s a conceded [sic] jerk who has a wee bit too much confidence in his own intelligence and morality."

and those remarks are complimentary compared to the comments at braves journal, including these reasoned opinions:

La Russa is such a prick.
LaRussa just has pent up anger because it has been 16 years since he won a World Series.
La Russa can lick my butt hole. and admire it too.

truth be told, i don’t much care either for this part of la russa’s personality. isn’t this sort of whining and pouting supposed to be the cubs’ specialty? put me down next to calvin pitt over at the birdwatch: "I'd prefer if LaRussa didn't say things like this. . . . . Tony should have applied that 'gag order' to himself as well as the team."

dunn deal

2005-04-30T10:59:00.000-06:00

kerry wood for adam dunn?

bleed cubbie blue floated the idea to his northside readership, and to my amazement most of the respondents were in favor. even more incredibly, most of the respondents at the red reporter (which picked up the thread) were against it - ie both sets of fans seemingly would rather have a 180-k-a-year hitter than a 280-k-a-year pitcher.

what the fu' am i missing?

c x a's

2005-04-29T13:17:00.000-06:00

nobody will be watching tonite's mulder-hudson matchup w greater interest - or heart - than the posters at athletics nation. palpable buzz at that url for a week-plus; loyalties divided roughly 50-50 between the two exes, near as i can tell. anyway, AN sure to be watching (and posting) so check it out. (oakland's own game tonight, btw, to be started by, who else, dan haren . . .)

add'l reading on the oakland rotation diaspora at cnnsi, where mulder is quoted thus: "I would not be the pitcher I am today without pitching with those guys. We pushed each other, in nothing but a good way, to be better. Nobody wanted to be the weak link, you might say. We all had our years when the other two outshined one of us. I became better because of it."

add'l quotes from both huddy and mulder in derrick goold's filing today at the p-d. and joe strauss examines the matchup of 2,000-win managers - a more historically significant showdown (1st since 1950), but overshadowed by the storybook pitching pairing.

redbird reasoning's series mini-preview also merits a look.

double visions

2005-04-29T05:07:00.000-06:00

the other day david pinto wondered whether pujols might have a shot at breaking the all-time doubles record, held by tris speaker with 792. all albert has to do is avg 50 doubles a year through the remainder of his 20s, then 35 a year throughout his 30s, and he’s got it. piece a shinola . . .

while we await that happy development in 2020, we can watch pujols’ ascent of various franchise all-time leaderboards. significant gains to be reaped this year on the career hr list; he already stands 9th with 160 and will likely pass simmons, bottomley, and hornsby this season to reach 6th place; should overtake mcgwire and lankford next year to reach #4, just behind jim edmonds — who entered this season 21 dingers ahead of pujols, in 6th place on the franchise leaderboard. edmonds may creak up to 2d place before all is said and done but will drop to third shortly thereafter as pujols blows by him. albert on pace to depose stan the man, atop the chart with 475 hr, in about 2016, ending The Man's reign of 53 years.

or 13 years longer than the babe reigned as mlb’s all-time hr king.

on the pitching side of the ledger, matt morris stands to climb four spots on the strikeout list (passing larry jackson, bill doak, steve carlton, and jesse haines) to rank #4 by the end of the year, behind only gibson, dean, and forsch. (you heard me right — bob forsch is the third-whiffingest redbird hurler ever, with 1079 . . . . .in, ahem, 2,794 innings.) mattymo also likely will crack the top 10 in games started and could, with a stellar season (21 wins), break into the top 10 in wins. morris also prob’ly rises to 5th by the end of this year in homers allowed. the guy’s all over these leaderboards — 8th in career winning pct (.626), 6th in k-w ratio (2.55), 10th in hit batsmen (could rise to 6th or so this season).

it’s about time we started appreciating the boyo — especially since this may be his last year in stl.

looking out for the LOOGYs

2005-04-28T02:24:00.000-06:00

on the same day jason i'hausen injured himself, the hardball times ran the second half of its two-part history of the LOOGY (part one and part two). musta been kismet — until i’hausen returns from the dl, la russa's LOOGYs, or (all together now) "left-handed one-out guys," will loom even larger than usual in the cardinals' bullpen.

the THT study, authored by steve treder, traces the LOOGY's evolution from bullpen freak to key role paying up to $2 million per. treder also confirms what st. louisans have long known and taken for granted: under tony la russa the LOOGY isn't just a relief role, it's a cabinet position. TLR is the all-time king of LOOGY managers, having managed almost 30 individual LOOGY seasons. and since joe torre also had a wicked LOOGY habit, the cardinals rate as the all-time champion LOOGY franchise.

indeed, the cards nearly completed the holy trinity this off-season when they acquired the all-time cy young of LOOGY pitchers, mike myers. damn shame they got rid of him before the season started. in la russa’s hands (and especially now, with izzy on ice) myers might have pitched 90 times this season, faced ~110 hitters and logged, say, 25 innings pitched. . . . . alas, we’ll never know the true limits of LOOGitude.

or perhaps we’ve already established them. according to treder, in the last 14 seasons (going back to year one of the torre regime) cardinal fans have been privileged to watch 12 pitchers who merit the appellation "really hard-core LOOGYs" (RHC LOOGYs). these aren’t just any old LOOGYs; as defined by treder, they are hyperspecialists who average fewer than 0.80 innings per appearance over the course of a season. here are the 12 in their glory:

1991: bob mcclure
1992: mcclure
1995: tony fossas
1996: fossas, rick honeycutt
1997: fossas
1998: lance painter
1999: scott radinsky
2000: jason christiansen
2001: christiansen
2004: ray king, steve kline

with 10 appearances and just 6 innings so far this year, ray king is well on his way to becoming the cards’ 13th RHC LOOGY of the era — and randy flores or carmen cali may well become the 14th when all is said and done. question is: have all those RHC LOOGYs served the cardinals well over the years?

en toto, RHC LOOGYs have made 670 appearances for st louis since 1991, covering 476 innings. their record: 3.10 era, 25 wins, 21 losses, 10 saves. per 200 innings pitched, they have allowed 180 hits and 82 walks, with 146 strikeouts. opposing hitters have batted .223 against them. the figures don’t change appreciably when we break out la russa’s RHC LOOGYs separately: 3.25 era, 19-18 with 10 saves, and (per 200 innings) 178 hits, 84 walks, 148 strikeouts, .218 batting avg.

the average RHC LOOGY, then, has pitched pretty effectively for the cardinals. alas, the cards under la russa have never had an "average" RHC LOOGY. they’ve either had very excellent RHC LOOGYs, or RHC LOOGYs whose appearances are tantamount to LOOGicide — bring them in and you’ve slit your own throat. the good RHC LOOGYs, all with era’s of 2.86 or lower, bookend la russa’s reign in stl: honeycutt and fossas from 96, kline and king from 04. the bad RHC LOOGYs all have era’s of 3.83 or higher and pitched from 1997-2001. grouped together:

good: 2.48 era, .190 opp ba; per 9 inn: 7.2 h, 3.0 bb, 6.1 k
bad: 4.27 era, .258 opp ba; per 9 inn: 9.2 h, 4.9 bb, 7.4 k

here’s the punch line: in the good RHC LOOGY years, la russa’s teams have played .570 ball (59-46) in 1-run games. in the bad RHC LOOGY years, his teams have played .480 ball (116-127) in 1-run games:

that shouldn’t shock anyone. RHC LOOGYs are sort of like place-kickers in football: their short appearances on the field have a disproportionately large effect on the final score. they generally pitch against one of the opponent’s best hitters, often with the tying or winning run at bat or on base; games often literally hinge on their one-batter stint. a good LOOGY season can turn a few losses into wins; a bad LOOGY season, the reverse. and the effect is only magnified in the absence of a true closer.

the difference between .570 and .480 in one-run games is about 6 wins over the course of a year — a game a month, more than enough to change the outcome of a pennant race. i hardly need remind anyone that in ’03, last time i’hausen got hurt, the cards went 14-25 in one-run games and missed the playoffs by 3 games.

so if we want to forecast how the cards will weather i’hausen’s absence, keep an eye on the LOOGYs. they’re the canaries in the coal mine: if they start to choke, it’s only a matter of time before the whole team is breathing bad air.

the curse of esteban yan

2005-04-27T02:23:00.000-06:00

and russ springer. and jeff fassero. and gabe molina.

anybody got pedro borbon, jr.’s cell number?

all those hands on deck and god knows who else in the wake of jason isringhausen’s injury last night. izzy left with one out in the 9th with what initial reports called an "abdominal strain" — did not look good, but too soon to panic.

not.

assuming they shut him down temporarily (and why take chances in april?), julian tavarez becomes the closer by default; he saved 15 games in 2003-04, and there’s truly nobody else who can do it . . . unless la russa decides to play the matchups batter-by-batter, in which case they might as well recall the entire memphis bullpen.

another approach — favored by my friend anolis — would be to take a shot at the theo epstein / bill james experiment of 2003 and abolish the closer role altogether. anybody might close on a given night, depending on who’s sharp, who’s throwing strikes, who’s keeping hitters off stride. one day it might be reyes, the next day flores, the next day tavarez; let circumstances and game situations decide, a la herzog in 1985.

’course, the epstein/james theory flopped in boston in ’03, and in any case it isn’t la russa / duncan’s style. at this point aint-broke-dont-fix seems in order; tavarez closes, reyes / king / flores share setup duties, journell stays in middle relief, and the cards replace isring’sen with not one but two arms from memphis — the better to eat innings and provide maximum matchup flexibility. my guesses are cali and jarvis get the call, with luna moving down to memphis.

if that’s the case, it leaves the bullpen with just two holdovers from the stingy ’04 unit (tavarez and king) and five other guys who pitched a combined total of 48 innings in the majors last year.

on the bright side: six pitching changes a night means longer games, hence extra time to commune with busch and its spirits; could add three or four game-lengths to the schedule . . .

dusty to dust

2005-04-26T13:10:00.000-06:00

the catalog of northside misery grows. chad fox’s elbow blew out. nomar’s linked to roids. and dusty baker’s a lech.

which is the least of his problems. after sev’l of dusty's in-game moves backfired and chicago blew a late lead to pgh on saturday, the cub blog army finally deserted. baker’s toast. the watch has officially begun. nice summary of the mutineers' remarks over at goat riders of the apocalypse, who writes:

"Look at the list of Blogs calling for Dusty Baker's head today. Bleed Cubbie Blue, The Cub Reporter, View From the Bleachers, Rooftop Report, we know Sloth, Ivy Chat, Cub Fan Nation, and the whole Desipio gang are out for Dusty's head... Mike Comar of Cubs Pundit has recently re-titled his blog, Fire Dusty Baker. In other words, I really think Dusty lost Cubs fans today. I personally gave him a million-and-a-half chances... and I'm done. Dusty Baker sucks."

that was on saturday, right after a frustrating loss. having taken a couple of days to cool down, goat riders weighs in today with this: "All we can do is hope that Jim Hendry also noticed Dusty's abuse of Chad Fox. All we can hope is that all of Dusty's bonehead, moronic mistakes are piling up. Otherwise, the Cubs won't win. They just can't. Not with Baker at the helm."

rooftop report has already started vetting candidates to succeed dusty and names a surprise preference: "Dierker's first year managing the Astros he had 7 players in double-digit steals. In his second season all eight starting position players were in double-digit steals. He knew how to use a bullpen, with his relievers all appearing in between 40-65 games a year. Nobody was overused and worthless at the end of the season."

and the fellahs at cubsfun have produced a definitive critique of dusty’s roster handling and lineup manipulations (courtesy of the cub reporter). comments to that post include the following: "I wish there was a way to prove this but I would bet my house that the Cubs would win signficantly more games with Scott Skiles managing than with Dusty."

and it's only april . . . .

three for the show

2005-04-25T05:15:00.000-06:00

yesterday’s non-triple-play called to mind a even more bizarre tp scenario — and another tidbit of busch stadium nostalgia. i witnessed the play and had a vague recollection of it; retrieved the details from chuck rosciam’s triple-play catalogue over at (where else?) retrosheet.

it happened in the 8th inning on opening day 1981 against the defending world-champion phillies before 38,473 (ruthven vs forsch). the phillies opened the inning with three singles and a walk, extending their lead to 5-2 and leaving the sacks full with nobody out: manny trillo at third, bake mcbride at 2d, mike schmidt at first. gary matthews came up against jim otten (the 3d pitcher of the inning) and scorched a sinking liner to shortstop, where gary templeton trapped the ball. unfortunately 2d-base ump jerry crawford immediately signaled catch and called the batter out, confusing the hell out of all the players on both teams, who knew damn well that the ball had hit the ground and the force play was in order. templeton’s reaction only worsened the confusion: he immediately threw home to force trillo, rather than throwing to 2d or 1st to double off a baserunner. what ensued resembled a bizarro-world infield drill — the baseball ping-ponging around the diamond, baserunners running out of sheer confusion, fielders making pegs with no purpose in mind other than to get rid of the ball and let somebody else figure out who to tag or which base to step on.

to pick up the play: darrell porter (playing in his first game as a cardinal), having received a meaningless throw from templeton, fired an equally meaningless throw to first base to put out matthews, who was already out . . . . meanwhile the baserunner at first, mike schmidt, had read the umpire’s call and alertly returned to the bag but then, on seeing the cardinals’ reaction, thought better of it and lit out for second. hernandez threw it down there and herr applied the tag for the 2d (or was it first?) out. herr than turned a reverse-pivot and heaved it to third, where oberkfell tagged out mcbride. all bets being off by now, the players deemed it prudent to keep running and throwing and covering bases until further notice . . . . all but trillo, who (thinking himself forced out at home) had long since veered off into the dugout. if he had tagged up and crossed the plate, his run surely would have counted, as he would have reached home well before obie put out mcbride to end the inning. every infielder touched the ball --- your basic 6-2-3-4-5 triple play.

the fielders and baserunners were all eventually excused; then dallas green ran out and browbeat the entire umpiring crew, and herzog joined the conference to serve notice that the umps’d catch many times worse from him if they reversed the call. in the end the play stood, the inning ended; i’m not sure but what the phillies might’ve played the rest of the game under protest. if they did, the gesture was moot; the game ended 5-2 philadelphia.

mulder 10 tational

2005-04-24T09:44:00.000-06:00

mark mulder’s great performance yesterday had athletics fans waxing nostalgic. a sampling: "Dan Haren is a great young pitcher, but he will never be able to do this. This is a one of a kind performance that i would only expect out of Mark Mulder."

the game put cardinal fans at the birdwatch in mind of a masterful 10-inning sho by john tudor in the heat of the ’85 pennant race: "A left-handed #30, going against a Cy Young winner, shuts out a division rival for 10 innings and one of the great stretch drive pick-ups in history drives home the game's only run for the Cardinals."

astro-fan blogger throws like a girl attended the game yesterday and brain-dumped mucho about clemens, mulder, busch, stl fans, etc.: "I don't know if I would call the St. Louis faithful the best fans in baseball, but they are certainly attentive and also courteous. . .. . It is weird and disheartening to see this casual disregard for their ballpark, especially considering the Cardinals' apparent infatuation with their illustrious history."

also worth a read: an early stat-alysis of eckstein’s fielding (a big concern of mine) at redbird reasoning: "So far this year . . . Renteria is getting to 86% of the balls that he should, while Eckstein is getting to 81%. Renteria's numbers are in line with his career mark, which is .851. Eckstein, on the other hand, has been quite a bit below his career average of .868. (Yes, that's right - over their careers, Eckstein has a better ZR than Renteria. Go figure.)"

7 in the 9th addendum

2005-04-23T10:46:00.000-06:00

not one but two "roger freed games"?

so informs brian gunn of hardball times and redbird nation fame. in a comment to my previous post, he writes:

"It's my understanding that this game -- in which Freed hit a two-out, extra-inning grand slam (on a 3-2 pitch, no less) -- is what is commonly known as 'the Roger Freed game.' Odd that one guy had two similar moments in one very brief career."

sure enough, it happened at busch against the astros on may 1 1979. silvio martinez squared off against jr richard and outpitched the sunuvagun, took a 3-1 lead into the eighth inning before tiring and losing the lead with two outs in the eighth. (check out the play-by-play at retrosheet and compare how ken boyer managed his bullpen in the 8th vs the way managers run games today. . . . .) the teams played into the 11th deadlocked 3-3; houston got to tom bruno for three in the top of the frame and entrusted the lead to joe sambito, he of the 1.23 era (he would finish the year at 1.77 with 22 saves). the cards didn’t exactly beat sambito to a pulp: tony scott legged out an infield hit, reitz fanned, then oberkfell walked, as did steve swisher (who’d entered the game on a double-switch). that turned over the lineup and brought up templeton, who entered the game hitting .302 but with only 3 rbis; he whiffed for the second out.

jerry mumphrey was due next, but boyer called him back and sent up freed. roger had finished the magical ’77 season at .398 but reverted to joe-lis form in ’78, batting just .239 in 92 at-bats. and he was hitless so far in ’79: five ph appearances, five outs. i wasn’t at the game and so can’t describe the moment, but like brian says freed did it again: a grand slam and a 7-6 cardinal win.

it would be roger’s last moment of big-league glory; he got just 25 more at-bats that season, then called it a career. as to whether this game or the 8/22/77 game is the authentic "roger freed game," it appears they both qualify for the honor. the ’77 game was televised on abc’s "monday night baseball," and it seemed like every kid in my 8th-grade class either watched it on tv or was at the game but left early and missed the great rally; within my clique that was the "freed" game. but if you saw or listened to the ’79 game no doubt it would stay with you forever — and forever call roger freed's name to mind.

for a guy with just 717 career at-bats and 22 hr, freed made himself some decent memories. he only logged 206 at-bats as a cardinal — but two of them made indelible impressions on a generation of young cardinal fans.

way to go roger.

acknowledgments again to retrosheet — can’t thank those guys enough — and to brian gunn for deepening the memory with an excellent comment.

busch nostalgia: 7 runs in 9th

2005-04-22T10:30:00.000-06:00

with busch stadium closing this year, a heavy dose of base sentimentality is inevitable from old fools like me; might as well get on with it.

leaving the list of all-time greatest games/moments to better minds, i’m going to write instead this season about games / moments that history has forgotten . . . . but that i remember. they took place not in the playoffs or during a pennant chase, but on some unremarkable saturday afternoon or wednesday evening in some may or july way back when. . . . .

it’s august 22, 1977; i am 14, and the cardinals are in fourth place. an atypically robust fourth place — thirteen games above .500 — but still 9 games behind philadelphia in the nl east. they are 5-4 on a long homestand that still has four games to run, and the dodgers are in town on a monday night for the first of two. la leads the nl west by 9.5 games over the twice-champion reds, and they look for all the world like champs themselves. these dodgers have ev’ything the cards of the mid-1970s lack. they have power — a league-leading 191 hrs in 1977, including four 30-hr men (one of them, reggie smith, a cardinal as recently as 1976); the cards will finish 23rd among the 24 mlb teams with 96 hr. the dodgers have steady defense — a.981 fielding percentage, 2d best in the league — while the cards commit nearly an error a game. above all the dodgers have outstanding pitching — an mlb-low 3.22 team era. in those innocent pre-sabr years, not even the best-informed baseball fan attributes the la pitchers’ excellent stat lines to dodger stadium; la’s pitchers are simply good, that’s all anyone knows. and the cardinals’ pitchers, as ever, are just good enough to drive you crazy; they yield half a run more per game than the dodgers’ moundsmen and will rate 7th in the league at year’s end.

nine years removed from their last postseason appearance, the cardinals have finally generated a new crop of stars-in-waiting. only one player, lou brock, remains from the championship teams of the ’60s; even manager red schoendienst is gone, replaced just this season by stern vern rapp. other than brock (who is 38), the entire starting lineup is 27 or younger. it’s led by ted simmons — an eight-year veteran but still only 27 years old — and two extremely talented homegrown players, 21-year-old garry templeton and 23-year-old keith hernandez. great expectations hover. the pitching staff, just as young and nearly as promising, features 27-year-old bob forsch (en route to 20 wins in 1977); reigning nl era champ (and future cy young winner) john denny, aged 24; and pete falcone, a hard-throwing 23-year-old lefty who already has two 12-win seasons under his belt.

denny is on the mound on this particular night, paired against the dodgers’ burt hooten (who enters the game 9-7, 2.64). denny opened his era-title defense in spectacular fashion, racing out to a 7-0 start, but since then he has suffered five straight losses and spent six weeks on the disabled list; his era now stands at a disheartening 4.05. and denny’s off again tonight: three singles plate a run with nobody out in the third; a hit batsman jams the sacks with two outs, and then steve yeager parks one — a grand slam and a 5-1 dodger lead. try to recall (those of you who’re gray-stubbled enough) what a 5-1 deficit meant in those days, when runs didn’t just fall from the sky and 414 feet of heavy air stood between home plate and the centerfield wall at busch stadium. you weren’t going to jump right back into the game with a couple of quick-strike homers. 5-1 was imposing — roughly akin to a 20-point gap in the nba.

and the cards don’t cut into it against hooten; he sails through the lineup, letting only one man advance into scoring position. the seats start to empty in the 7th inning, and after the redbirds go meekly in the bottom of the 8th departing fans choke the exits; garbage time has arrived, and not even a 9th-inning appearance by the mad hungarian can redeem it. hrabosky’s ineffectiveness (a run on 2 hits) wipes out the last vestige of hope, along with nearly all of the remaining spectators; the few souls who remain from the paid crowd of 28,222 are all ones who, in today’s parlance, need to get a life.

jerry mumphrey’s leadoff single in the 9th doesn’t make their loyalty appear any less foolish; nor does templeton’s ensuing triple to make it 6-2. and the fans know it; nobody thinks this “rally” will lead anywhere, and the crowd does not roar. nor is lasorda particularly concerned; he lifts hooten for a mop-up guy named lance rautzhan, a rookie lhp appearing in only his 10th big league game. simmons chases temp’ton home with a single to make it 6-3, but still . . . . c’mon. hernandez though doubles simmons home and takes third on an error, and now it’s 6-4 with nobody out, the tying run is at the plate, and those few diehards who remain in their seats look up from their beers and finally start to pay attention again.

charlie hough relieves rautzhan and promptly knuckles one past yeager; hernandez trots home to make it 6-5, and hopeful cheers echo off empty seats. but mike anderson strikes out, and with ken reitz and mike tyson now due to hit it seems that fantasy will yield, as it inevitably must, to reality. reitz though musters a single, and tyson singles the pinch-runner (rick bosetti) into scoring position, setting up a confrontation for the ages: charlie hough against roger freed.

freed is in the midst of one of the most improbable seasons in baseball history. he came into the 1977 season with 511 career at-bats, 13 homers, a .221 average and 133 strikeouts. he might generously be described as a poor man’s dave kingman; ungenerously we might say he’s a poor man’s joe lis. but in 1977, freed inexplicably becomes jimmie foxx. in his first 9 at-bats (liberally dispersed across the first seven weeks of the season) he gets 5 hits. as of july 4 he’s hitting .333 (albeit in highly limited playing time); a week later he starts four games in a row and goes 7 for 12, lifting his average to .405. at which point it becomes quite clear that roger freed has been touched by supernatural forces. no one knows what spirit(s) he has invoked nor what price his soul will ultimately pay, but there’s no question about it: freed is charmed. his every at-bat seems potently fraught. he is the perfect batter for this moment: a man in the midst of a miracle season trying to cap off a miracle comeback. a cone of celestial light bathes him as he stands just outside the batter’s box, waiting out a conference at the mound — ron perranoski counseling hough on how to pitch to a shaman or some such. the conference ends, and freed digs in; hough delivers, and pow! there she goes, into the left-centerfield bleachers.

a walkoff homerun — that rarest of feats for the 1970s cardinals. a seven-run ninth-inning rally — rare even by today’s hyperoffensive standards. the cards mob roger freed at the plate, cheered on by the handful of don quixotes who still people the seats. across the city, meanwhile, about 24,000 early-departing fans listen with mixed emotions as buck and shannon call the bottom of the 9th; with every base hit their sense of shame and self-reproach grows, and they root that much harder for the rally to fall short and redeem their judgment.

the "roger freed game" (as posterity knows it) represents a pinnacle for that particular crop of cardinals. for that one night they fulfilled their promise, rose up and defeated a champion. two nights later they would reach their high-water mark, 16 games over .500; though they played together three more years, this particular group of players would never again achieve such loft. the great herzog purge of 1980-81 scattered that talented young st louis roster to the four winds. only hernandez and forsch would remain; only they would ultimately fulfill the promise of the 1977 team.

see the box score at retrosheet — and thanks to them, as always, for the invaluable work they do.

no nomar no more . . . .

2005-04-21T09:24:00.000-06:00

either espn miked the cub wives’ section of the stands, or a lotta chicagotoids made it to busch last night. here’s what some on’m are saying this a.m.:

bleed cubbie blue
"The Cubs seemed to come out and approach this game with a sense of purpose. It may be too early to have one of those "message" games, but winning at St. Louis, a house of horrors for years, in decisive fashion in front of a full house, has to buoy the spirits and confidence of every single member of the ballclub."

cub reporter
"I’d love to be excited by a well-played victory versus our arch-nemesis the Cardinals, but the ever-lasting image of Nomar crumpling to the ground and subsequently being carried off the field is sadly what most of us will probably take from the game. No definitive word on the injury yet, but I got one of those hunches that it’s really, really bad. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we see him before the All-Star break."

cub reporter also has an extended post about nomar’s injury and the cubs’ options in the wake thereof.

chicago tribune
steve stone apparently steered clear of the cubs while prepping for his duties as espn game analyst last night. quoth he: "I don't anticipate any problems. It's a new year. They have certain goals they have to attain and I'm trying to do my job. We're not going to interact."

finally, there was this piece of news from yesterday’s open game thread at bleed cubbie blue:

"Too lazy to look up the Cubs' record on the days after new popes were elected.
by dvdmgsr on Wed Apr 20, 2005 at 03:57:13 PM CST

You made me do this...
8/12/1903: Split DH with Braves, won game 1 7-4, lost game 2 11-10 (no game on 8/10 or 8/11)
9/4/1914: Lost to Reds 4-2
6/22/1963: Lost to Pirates 3-0
8/27/1978: Beat Reds 7-1
by Al on Wed Apr 20, 2005 at 04:18:15 PM CST"

a very interesting study, but far more pertinent obviously to our guys — insofar as after casting their votes they have to fly back from the vatican in time for the first pitch. on the day after electing a new holy father, the cardinals:

lost to the giants 14-4 on august 12 1903
lost to pgh 2-1 on sept 4 1914
beat los angeles 2-1 on jun 22 1963
beat atlanta 14-3 on august 27 1978
lost to the cubs 3-1 on april 20 2005

thanks eternally to baseball reference.com.

cubs v cards 2004: last look back

2005-04-20T07:27:00.000-06:00

the cubs’ dominance over the cardinals last year in head-to-head games can be summarized like this:

in 168 innings, the cubs allowed 151 hits and struck out 151 hitters.
in 167 innings, the cards allowed 196 hits and struck out 111 hitters.

from these numbers alone you would assume the cubs won the season series handily; and you’d become convinced beyond any doubt after looking at the hitting lines. the cubs out-oba’d the cards 347-313, outslugged them 486-448, outhit them 297-244, and out-ops’d them 833-761.

over the 19 games the cubs created 112 runs, the cards just 87. so how in god’s name did the cards win the season series 11-8?

i began trying to answer that question last month, before work and life interrupted the project. i’m not going to go back and complete that long and tedious enterprise, but the larger point of it need not be lost: the cubs should have hammered the cardinals last season. via runs created and the pythagorean formula, we would predict that the cubs should have won 12 of the 19 meetings last year. they won only 8 — an 8-game swing in the standings. now consider this: after completing the 19-game series on july 20, the cards led chicago by 10 games in the standings. factor in that 8-game swing, and the cards’ lead would have been just 2 games.

think that might have made for a slightly diff’nt stretch run?

and it’s easy to single out four games the cubs could or should have won. there was the 1st game of the year, when the cubs outhit the cards 10-5 but walked four men in the bottom of the 9th to lose 4-3. there was the third game, on may 2, when they again walked the bases full in the last inning of a tie game and lost 1-0. there was the may 21 game in wrigley, in which the cubs hit 4 dingers but fell 7-6; and of course the last game of the year, in which the cardinals rallied from an 8-2 hole to humiliate the cubs 11-8.

above all there was the 13th meeting of the season, on june 23d. you all remember it: the cards went up 3-0, then 5-3, but fell behind 9-5 after a disastrous 6-run cub rally in the top of the sixth — an inning so exasperating it left steve kline flipping the bird at his manager. but the cards clawed back to within a run, tied it on hec luna’s sac fly, and won it on a passed ball in the bottom of the 8th. cardinals 10, cubs 9.

the game fell neatly within the season-long pattern: the cards beating the cubs despite losing by every statistical measure. in this game the cubs outhit the cards 14-9, put 21 runners on base to the cards’ 14, and pounded 22 total bases to the cards’ 17. for good measure they took two cardinal runners off the bases, turning a double play and nailing womack at third on a peg from the outfield. but, cubs being cubs, they left 11 men on base and committed three errors, plus the passed ball . . . .

that single game literally turned the race around. had the cubs won it (as they should), they would have pulled into a first-place tie with the cardinals. instead they fell two back, and the two became three when the cards won the rubber game the next day. the cubs came into the june 23 game on a 9-1 tear; thereafter they went 6-10, while the cards in the same span went 13-3. just like that, an apparent first-place tie became an 8-game spread.

i think that june 23 loss altered the cubs’ self-image. they fell meekly 4-0 the next day in just 2 hours 14 minutes; succumbed to the cards again 6-1 and 5-2 just before the all-star break; then fell to pieces in the last series of the year, blowing an 8-2 lead in one game and throwing beanballs and tantrums in the other.

truthfully, the cardinals and cubs redefined each other last season in their head-to-head series. the cubs, preseason favorites to win the nl pennant, were exposed in their games vs the cardinals as a sloppy, immature, wastrel team, throwing away wins they would ultimately need. the cards, conversely, proved with their victories over chicago that they could contend for the division. from that first four-game set against the cubs, when st louis eked out two very tentative wins, the cardinals evolved from wannabe-contenders into a true juggernaut — so much so that by the last series of 2004 they toyed with the floundering cubs, laughed in their faces.

as we watch the old rivals battle in 2005, should be fun to see if (and how) they change each other.

kiko k'od?

2005-04-19T12:08:00.000-06:00

athletics nation is reporting, per mlb.com, that kiko calero's elbow ails. just a one-line toss-off in the daily report:

"Reliever Kiko Calero, who pitched two perfect innings Saturday, is experiencing some pain in his elbow and was unavailable Monday."

that sly jocketty . . . .

hotel hell

2005-04-19T11:13:00.000-06:00

also happened to catch jim rome's 5-minute int'view with jim edmonds last hour. rome asked "what happened last october against the red sox," and edmonds said "we just came up flat"; rome followed, "how the hell does a team come up flat in the world series?" and edmonds hauled out the pathetic canard about the team hotel not being up to snuff. he also said (paraphrasing) that the cards' current theory is that boston's front office didn't think they'd be in the world series anyway and hence didn't reserve rooms for the visiting team until after all the prime lodgings were taken. . . . in other words, the stupid hotel is still a hot topic in the clubhouse. you'd think they might talk instead about rolen's 0-fer or edmonds' 1-fer . . . .

if you're a rome subscriber you can hear this on the net at rome's site.

april is cruelest redux

2005-04-19T09:39:00.000-06:00

cheer up yadless — you stink now, but (to paraphrase gen’l patton) all stinkage is fleeting. . . . well, some stinkage anyway; a good bit of it is eternal. btaim, where does molina's lame 2005 launch rate on the spectrum of slow cardinal aprils? off the top o me head i can think of half a dozen or so horrid starts by redbird rookies, plus assorted april flops by veterans added during the off-season. all statistics herein derived via the magic of david pinto’s day-by-day database.

i begin with the worst season launch i can remember — turned in coincidentally by a new starting catcher on a pennant-defending cardinal team:

mike heath, 1986
four hits through his first 12 starts: .080 avg, .359 ops. heath compiled his quintessential stat line on april 19 (19 yrs ago to the day) in a 17-inning win against the expos: 0 for 8, with an error and a passed ball (thanks retrosheet). herzog started platooning the guy, and he bounced back in may — .281 for the month with 10 walks, lifting his ops all the way to .601; but by then the cards were in last place, 10 games under and 14.5 behind the torrid mets, and the cardinals’ stake in the return of mike heath’s batting eye no longer held much value. he lost the job to mike lavalliere and by late august was playing for cleveland.

heath 86
thru apr 30: 4 for 50 (.080), 1hr 3bi, 179/180/359
thru may 31: 20 for 107 (.187), 2hr 15bi, 293/308/601

i started with heath because he’s the only guy i could come up with who had a start even remotely as awful as yadless’s. but the comparison’s not really apt — heath was 31 years old with a 7-yr track record (he bounced back in ’87 to hit .281 for the division-winning tigers), while yadier is a 22-yr-old rookie still trying to establish a big-league identity. i can think of five rooks in recent stl history who went through somewhat similar travails, starting with:

keith hernandez, 1975
handed the 1b job after a strong september ’74 callup, hernandez hit .189 thru april with one xbhit, still only at .211 by the end of may. he got sent back to tulsa shortly thereafter, returned to the bigs late in the season and went 21 for his last 65. proceeded to have a decent career . . . .

hernandez 75
thru apr 30: 10 for 53 (.189), 0 hr 4bi, 271/226/498
thru may 31: 26 for 123 (.211), 1hr 12bi, 285/317/602

heity cruz, 1976
case study in how to mishandle a prospect. an outfielder by trade, the 22-year-old cruz (younger bro of jose) became a 3baser — a position he’d never played at any level — by front-office fiat and declared the successor to the traded ken reitz. formula for failure. yet the organization was surprised when cruz hit just .170 thru april with a 2/13 walk-to-k ratio and a .461 ops. by may 31 he’d only heated up to .202, and the peripherals were abominable: 3 walks and 30 ks in 129 at-bats. he finished the year at .228 with a 625 ops (ops+ of 77) and, for good measure, a .934 fielding percentage. career ruined

h cruz 76
thru apr 30: 9 for 53 (.170), 1hr 9bi, 196/264/461
thru may 31: 26 for 129 (.202), 4hr 16bi, 224/333/557

jim lindeman, 1987
marginal 25-yr-old 1b prospect, but got so hot in spring training that the cards traded andy van slyke to pgh (for tony pena) and stuck lindeman in right field. he continued to pop the ball in april — 7 2bs, 3 hr — but 2 walks v 14 ks spelled trouble, which arrived right on schedule. come may, lindy hit .077 and fanned 11 times in 26 at-bats without a walk or an xb hit. that was all herzog needed to see; he started platooning jose oquendo and curt ford in right, while lindeman lurched to a .208 avg / 640 ops (66 ops+) in spot duty the rest of the way. he smote a pivotal homer in the ‘87 nlcs but otherwise was ruined by that impotent may; the remainder of his big-league career consisted of 414 at-bats scattered across 7 seasons.

lindeman 87
thru apr 30: 13 for 54 (.241), 3hr 11bi, 263/537/800
may 1 thru 31: 2 for 26 (.077), 0hr 3bi, 074/077/151
thru may 31: 15 for 72 (.208), 3hr 14bi, 224/431/654

luis alicea, 1988
took over for tom herr (dealt to min) in late april at 22 and, 10 games in, was only marginally better than molina at 6 for 33. by may 31 alicea had lifted his avg to just .221, but with 17 walks and 8 xb hits (624 ops) he was showing some signs of life. little looie drew only 8 walks the rest of the way, however, finished at .212 (599 ops, 61 ops+) and did not appear in another big-league game for nearly three years.

alicea 88
thru may 3: 6 for 33 (.182), 0hr 5bi, 282/242/524
thru may 31: 29 for 131 (.221), 1hr 15bi, 309/305/614

david bell, 1996
another failure at 2bag, lost his job to . . . . the aforementioned luis alicea. bell got 13 april starts at 2d and batted just .196 with 2 walks and 1 rbi. 11 starts later, he’d tripled the rbi total. . . . . . but still was at .188. he got just 60 at-bats the rest of the way, didn’t make the cards’ postseason roster, and didn’t improve a whit in 1997 — almost identical numbers. he has since played well enough to push his salary to $4 million a year, which accomplishment ranks as bell’s finest as a ballplayer. . . . . list of similar players at baseball-reference.com includes the immortal ed charles of the 69 amazins.

da bell 96
thru apr 30: 9 for 46 (.196), 1hr 1bi, 229/304/534
thru may 31: 16 for 85 (.188), 1hr 3bi, 255/259//514

i can’t end this discussion without mentioning one of my all-time favorite slow starts by a cardinal player — love the 2-30 walk-whiff ratio and 30-rbi pace:

galarraga 92
thru may 31: 8 for 40 (.200), 0hr 3bi, 256/200/456
thru jun 30: 22 for 119 (.185), 0hr 6bi, 2bb 30k, 230/235/465

finally, there’s darrell porter, the living breathing embodiment of sabrmetric principles. porter arrived in 1981 to replace the beloved ted simmons, a career .300+ hitter and marginal hall-of-fame candidate. porter didn’t hit .300; nor, for his first couple of months, did he even hit .200. not by a long shot. accordingly st louisans hated his guts and grumbled loudly about simmons’ departure. if we’d known then what we know now about how to read a stat line, perhaps we wouldn’t have grumbled so much:

porter 81
thru apr 30: 4 for 24 (.167), 1 hr 2bi, 10bb, 412/375/787
thru may 31: 9 for 52 (.173) 2 hr 8bi, 19bb, 394/385/779

inefficiency experts

2005-04-18T13:54:00.000-06:00

after 10 games, the cardinals stand dead last in the national league in defensive efficiency rating.

small sample size, yes, but let me repeat: they’re dead last. behind the fossilized giants, the talentless rockies (who have coors to contend with), the patchwork d-backs. on a team this old, lately shorn of two gold gloves, that’s real cause for concern.

on t’other hand . . . david eckstein thru 10 games has been flawless in the field, with no errors and a 5.34 range factor/9. again, small sample size — but the early returns do not suggest he is the gaping hole some commentators (espec’ly your humble correspondent) feared he might be.

also to the good: cards have yielded just 6 hr so far. but to the bad: only 11 doubles, and only 27 extra-base hits overall, next to last in the league. that makes a nice balance with the team's league-worst 27 walks . . . . . .

add'l numbers crunched today at the birdwatch

kline in his milk

2005-04-13T06:51:00.000-06:00

there was a reliver named kline
who had a dysfunctional mind
the only things worse
than his brain-chemical curse
were the stats on his pitching line

ankiel, pulsipher, kline --- what is going on here? if the only qualifications you need to pitch for the cards are left-handedness and mental/emotional imbalance, then i could suit up for the damn team . . . .

the cruelest month

2005-04-11T09:47:00.000-06:00

this dispatch from a friend who attended saturday's 10-4 loss to phila:

I saw the redbirds this weekend and they looked awful. The town is in a panic, just like last year at this time. But I think this year is different: their play is lazy and uninspired, Edmunds has clearly lost a step, they're old, their rotation, while deep, is full of pitchers who overachieved last year, and their bullpen simply sucks. I'm convinced Mulder has blown-out his arm. I did hear on sports open-line that LaRussa's teams are notorious for slow starts (they were 24-22 at one point last year), but this slow start may turn into a slow middle and a slow end. The loss of Calero and Kline cannot be overstated. And by the way, the signing of Larry Walker may be one of the dumbest things Jocketty has ever done. If Walker wasn't on the team, maybe Renteria or (more importantly) Matheny would be.

my response as follows:

all your points may be right . . . . but they looked pretty wretched in april last year too. opened 1-3 at home against milwaukee (!), gave up 30 runs in 4 games. a week later the astros came to town and swept three straight, outscored the birds 26-9.

i also recall a year (maybe 2002) when st louis opened the season in colorado. i didn't go to any of the games because i hate coors field baseball, but the cards got clobbered in all three. let me go look it up (i love the web . . . )

here it is: in 2001, fresh off winning the division by 10 games, the cards opened in denver and lost three in a row by a combined score of 32-11. that year's team was .500 as late as july 29, and they were 8.5 games behind the cubs; they went 42-19 down the stretch and tied houston for the division, while the cubs went 28-32 and finished third.

long season.

beaucoups debuts

2005-04-08T10:50:00.000-06:00

we greet mark mulder (winningest stl offseason acquisition in 50 yrs) with a sampling (not quite random) of new cardinal pitchers' april debuts down through the years:

apr 16 72 at busch, mtl 3 stl 2
wise (l): 8ip 6h 3r(2er) 2w 4k

apr 6 74 at busch: stl 8 pgh 0
siebert (w): 9ip 4h 0r 2w 6k

apr 10 74 at shea: nym 3 stl 2
curtis (l): 7ip 6h 3r 3w 3k

apr 13 74 at threerivers: stl 6, pgh 4
mcglothen (w) 8.1ip 9h 4r 3w 7k

apr 13 76 at threerivers: pgh 14, stl 4
falcone (l) 1.2ip 1h 5r 5w 0k

apr 12 81 at busch: stl 7, pha 3
sorenson (w) 6ip 5h 3r 1w 4k

apr 10 82 at busch: pgh 11, stl 7
mura (nd) 1.1ip 3h 3r 3w 2k

apr 11 85 at shea: ny 2 stl 1 (11)
tudor (nd) 9ip 3h 1r(0er) 3w 5k

apr 7 88 at rivfront: cin 8, stl 1
deleon (l) 3.2ip 5h 4r 6w 3k

apr 10 90 at busch: stl 4 mtl 2
bry smith (w) 5ip 8h 2r 2w 1k

apr 3 96 at shea: stl 5 ny 3
stottmyre (w) 7.2ip 5h 3r 3w 5k

apr 3 00 at busch: stl 7 chi 1
kile (w) 6ip 2h 1r 2w 4k

apr 6 01 at bank one: stl 12 az 9
hermnson (w) 5ip 6h 6r 4w 5k

apr 4 03 at busch: hou 6 stl 5 (12)
tomko (nd): 6ip 5h 5r (0er) 3w 3k

apr 6 04 at busch: mil 7, stl 5
marquis (l): 5.1ip 8h 6r 1w 6k

apr 8 04 at busch: mil 11 stl 5
suppan (l): 4ip 8h 6r 3w 4k

apr 9 04 at bank one: stl 13 az 6
carpter (w): 6ip 7h 5r 1w 3k

93 and 69

2005-04-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

ok, time to get down to it. the cards will finish 93-69 this year, which will likely (but not surely) get them into the playoffs for the fifth time in six years. a great big cloud of triumphalism has billowed up among the cardinal faithful this spring, particularly during the last week or so of camp, and it seems to me badly misplaced; i think this is going to be a rockier ride than anybody wants.

i base the forecast on the following considerations, presented in no particular order:

history. the vast majority of 100-win teams win fewer than 100 for an encore. that goes for even the most dominant teams of the past generation. the ’84 tigers (104 wins), ’86 mets (108), ’88 a’s (104), and ’95 indians (100-44 in strike-shortened year) all failed to reach 100 the following year, as did the two winningest teams of all time, the ’98 yankees (114 wins) and ’01 mariners (116). so 90-something wins almost surely it will be. that conclusion is reinforced by the glances i took this winter at 100-win teams, runaway division winners, dual league leaders in runs for and runs against, and the four teams with profiles most similar to the 2004-05 cardinals.

leading indicators. in one of the abstracts, bill james enumerated seven "leading indicators" to distinguish teams on the rise from teams on the decline. i can’t remember all seven, but i know the list included three that augur ill for the cards in ’05:
1) differential betw actual w-l and pythagorean w-l: the cards were +5 in ’04, ie they were a 100-win team masquerading as a 105-winner. even if all else stays the same, luck alone will likely shave at least five games off the cards’ win total
2) age: old teams tend to decline; young teams tend to improve. the cards are old.
3) previous-year improvement/decline: the cards improved by 20 games in ’04. a bounce that large tends to be followed by a bounce in the opposite direction the following season.

career years. a lot of cardinals played at the top of their games last season, and hence may be due for a bit of a letdown in ’05. how widespread was this happy syndrome last year? here’s a list of career bests established by cardinal players in 2004:

womack — ba, oba, slg, ops, ops+
rolen — hr, ba, oba, slg, ops, ops+
edmonds — hr (t), rbi, slg, ops, ops+
mabry — hr (t), oba, slg, ops, ops+
pujols — hr, walks
matheney — rbi
marquis — w, ip, gs, so
suppan — w, h/ip
carp’ter — w, h/ip, wh/ip, k/ip, era (1.13 below career avg), era+
king — w, g, h/ip, wh/ip, era, era+
tavarez — era (2.00 below career average)*, h/ip
kline — era, h/ip

so let’s see: the three-four-five hitters all set or tied career highs in homers, and two of those three also set new standards in slugging and ops. the leadoff man set a career mark for oba. three starting pitchers set career highs in wins. and perhaps most incredible of all, the entire setup corps (king tavarez kline and calero) set career lows in both era and hits per inning. . . . . the sabermetricians have a stat for this sort of thing: they call it Flurry of Lucky, Unprecedented Creer Events, or FLUCES. (ok, so they can't spell . . . . they're sabrmetricians.) no need to tell you that the cardinals led the majors in it last year by a wide margin. some of last year’s stalwarts are going to have lesser years in ’05, and one or two may flat-out suck. the cards led the league in both runs scored and runs prevented last year; i don’t believe they’ll lead in either this season. still in the upper echelon, but not on the throne.

the bullpen in particular seems primed for a busted bubble. tavarez’s 2.38 era was two runs below his career average; he won’t have calero to take the heat off him this season and strikes me as rather liable to get exposed. king’s career year in ’04 wasn’t quite as far out of line with his norms, but he pitched in 86 games and reported some arm stiffness this spring . . . . duh. even if fat ray stays limber, he will need support from two scrubs (pulsipher and flores) who might have struggled to make the staff out here in denver. the rh setup corps — tavarez eldred and al reyes — will not scare anyone. if king hits the dl and tavarez reverts to form . . . . well just keep yer fingers crossed.

so much for what concerns me about the team. . . . . actually i could go on, but the point has been made. what’s to like about the 2005 cards?

the starting pitching. the cardinals’ two best pitchers, mulder and morris, are both due to rebound from subpar years. bad shoulder and all, morris fanned 6 guys per 9 innings, had a whip of 1.29, and won 15 games last season; that’s one of the best "bad" pitching lines in franchise history. he returns healthy, slightly pissed off, and pitching for a new contract — he could win 20. carpenter is the new woody williams — in and out of arm trouble, but in command and good for 15 wins. suppan is a known quantity, marquis just the opposite — might win 15 again, or might pitch his way out of the rotation by the all-star break.

that brings us to mulder, the great x-file. rarely has an offseason acquisition been burdened with such portent as this one. if he’s on, mulder goes 21-5 and the cardinals return to the series. if he’s off, he spends more time on the d.l. and the sports psychologist’s couch than on the mound, and st louis labors to 86 victories. if the former, jocketty supplants billy beane as baseball’s reigning front-office genius; if the latter, he supplants john depodesta as the reigning front-office schmuck.

i’m betting that jocketty knows what he’s doing.

they can still hit. as long as albert stays healthy, they’ll put up enough runs.

the division stinks. the astros and cubs both remain dangerous (more so than we might like to admit), but we’d all be a lot more worried if they both hadn’t trimmed strong-armed starters and rbi men from their rosters.

they have trade depth and payroll flexibility. even with haren’s departure, the cards still have attractive pitching prospects — enough to fetch a setup man, a lefthanded bat, a middle infielder, or whatever other fortification(s) they might need come july. nobody shops more wisely at the midseason flea market than jocketty.

if it sounds like i don’t think much of this team . . . . well how could you not be concerned? the cardinals brought in castoffs to play second and short, topped off the bullpen with journeymen and reclamation projects, and have staked nearly all on a guy who basically pitched his team out of the playoffs last september. ev’yone else has holes, sure, but the cards are far from invincible . . . . . with the league (especially the central) so far down, though, i don’t know that anyone will vince them. the cubs? for sure, if their aces hold up and their bullpen holds leads. houston? sorry, don’t think so. pittsburgh? not ready. cincinnati? c’mon . . . .

the wild card will probably come out of the nl east this year, where florida phila and atlanta will be vying. the cubs are sloppy and stupid, but they sure can pitch. i foresee a tense summer in st louis.

predicted runs scored: 830, 3d in league (behind phila and fla)
predicted runs allowed: 700, 6th in league (behind fla la chi nym and atl)
predicted finish: 93-69, 1st place by 1 game over chicago
nl east champ: florida
nl central champ: st louis
nl west champ: san francisco
nl wild card: philadelphia
al east champ: new york
al central: minnesota
al west: anaheim
al wild card: oakland
pennant winners: st louis, new york
series: st louis

keep it simple

2005-03-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

haven’t posted in a zillion yrs, my life taken over temporarily by another writing project. but here’s something quick n easy n worth the time: tom meagher at sabernomics has come up w a new projection system which he calls the sabernomics simple projection system, or ssps. (tip o cap to baseball musings.) meagher ran 2005 projections for ev’y major league hitter who got 150 pa in 2004 (ceptin’ larry walker, apparently, since i could not find the old buzzard). the cardinals’ projections herewith: batting avg, oba, slg, ops

reg’lars
eckstn 284 / 333 / 380 / 713
pujols 323 / 405 / 589 / 994
rolen 300 / 384 / 550 / 935
edmnd 288 / 401 / 597 / 998
grud’k 285 / 333 / 428 / 761
sanders 263 / 331 / 487 / 818
molina 291 / 347 / 443 / 790

bench
cedeno 273 / 335 / 423 / 758
hluna 275 / 328 / 436 / 764
mabry 276 / 350 / 498 / 847
tagchi 282 / 332 / 417 / 750

god bless’m if he’s right about molina; a line like that and we’d never notice edgar’s bat missing. but i’m with you — i’ll believe it when i see it. he’s got mabry outslugging and out-oba’ing sanders — platoon? — and projects that little scrapster eckstein to keep scrappin’. and if’n he’s wrong about eckstein . . . . well then maybe he’s right about luna, who’s a better fielder to begin with and, by these lights, a more productive bat. but hold on: ssps predicts signif productivity declines for all three of the bats that matter most, albt jimmy and scotty. and i can’t say i disagree: all three either set or tied career highs for homers in 2004 (more on this soon, i hope), and both rolen and edmonds set new standards in slugging and ops. you betcha they’re going to slide.

in any case, it’s an untested system and not likely to be worth more than any of the other ones out there (ie, not worth a lot). but to the extent it has any value at all, i think it bodes more good than ill. will keep an eye on it.

what mcgwire should have said

2005-03-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

in a just world, mark mcgwire would/could have said something like this last thursday:

ok, i did it. but all the rest of you did too.

while i was juicing my body with steroids, you were juicing your profit margins with bogus bandwidth transactions. i used artificial inputs to inflate my home run totals; you used them to inflate your stock returns. i acquired obscenely large forearms; you acquired mcmansions and hummers and 2d homes in colorado. i was addicted to testosterone enanthate and winstrol and equipoise; you were addicted to campaign cash and venture capital and misleading quarterly reports. same stuff, different format. all of us were on the juice back in those days.

we were bulking up and loving every minute of it. nobody cared how you did it — whether you bulked up in the weightroom or with a syringe; whether you built up solid revenues or cooked the books and created paper profits that didn’t really exist. my biceps, your earnings projections — everyone knew they might be fake, but so what? didn’t matter back then. bulk alone mattered. as long as everyone agreed to keep up the pretense that the bulk was real, we all got ahead.

it didn’t seem wrong at the time. we were all profiting hand over fist, so why quibble about whether the bulk was honestly come by? stupid question; kind of thing that’d make people roll their eyes at you. a question like that completely missed the point; the point back then was to keep serving up the bulk, keep hitting the homers, keep driving those double-digit returns on wall street. 70 dingers, 12,000 on the dow — just keep up the pretense. just don’t burst the bubble.

now the bubble is burst. now the pretense is no longer shared. two days ago, bernie ebbers got convicted for securities fraud. and here we are today in front of this committee, and you ladies and gentlemen ask us in all apparent earnestness: is baseball on the level? i roll my eyes at you and say: stupid question. you already know the answer; you see it ev’y time you look in the mirror.

let me say a word to those who believe that i and barry bonds and sammy sosa should give back our mvp awards and our home run titles. i'll give mine back when you give back your stock-option windfalls; when you shed the bulk (the homes, the suvs, the retirement accounts) that you amassed with the help of artificial enhancements; when you disavow your pacs and your 529s and resign the offices purchased thereby. let all that happen, and i'll come clean too. but you better drop your own pretenses first before you come after mine.

cubs v cards: round 3

2005-03-10T12:29:00.001-07:00

i’ll weigh in shortly about david pinto’s eye-opening charts revealing the holes in david eckstein’s range. for now, suffice to say that the charts do nothing to assuage my concerns.

meantime, here’s installment 3 of the chi-stl 2004 series review.
part 1 here
part 2 here

SERIES 3: JUNE 7-10, at CHICAGO

CONTEXT: the cardinals mean to make a summer of it; they’re 9-3 since their last meeting with the cubs and have moved into 2d place, a game behind the surprising reds. the cubs’ injuries are catching up to them; they’re 4-9 since the last series and have fallen to within 2 games of .500, three games behind st louis. sosa and wood remain on the shelf, and borowski has joined them there. but prior is back and apparently healed — six shutout innings in his first start — and the season is long; no way the cubs can struggle like this all summer. not once they get healthy.

SERIES SUMMARY: the cards yield 26 runs in four games and get just one game score above 32 from their starters, yet they still manage (what else) a split, with another 1-run win (their 4th of the year vs chicago) and a 12-4 thrashing of mark prior. the cards outhit the cubs in that game for the first time all season. and, despite playing the whole series without albert pujols, they swat at least two dingers in every game and out-hr chicago 9-6 for the series. and the longballs count — hrs knock in all four of stl’s runs in their series-opening 4-3 win, and 8 of their 12 in the game 3 triumph. the cubs win all the macrostatistical battles decisively — runs, rc, ba, ops, der — but continue not to capitalize on those advantages in the standings. and their frustration is starting to show — derek lee reacts to a brushback pitch in game three, and the benches empty. no punches thrown, but in retrospect it looks like a telling moment, a shift in dynamic: the cards acting like alpha dogs, the cubs feeling threatened.

PIVOTAL MOMENT: first game, bottom 5th, cards clinging to 4-3 lead. chris carpenter is fading badly — over the last eight hitters he’s yielded five hits, incl two doubles and a homer (to glendon rusch). with jose macias at 2d and one out, mike barrett laces yet another hit, but macias gets a lousy jump and has to stop at 3d; shoulda scored. but no matter, seemingly: carp’ter promptly falls behind 2-0 to alou and appears to want no part of him; ramirez waits on deck. then alou reaches outside the zone and lifts a fly to center; not deep, but prob’y deep enough for speedy macias. edmonds tho uncorks a perfect throw to the plate and nails the runner on a close play. and that turns out to be the ballgame; no baserunner from either side reaches scoring position for the rest of of the afternoon.

BY THE NUMBERS:
runs: chi 26-22
hits: chi 48-31
hrs: stl 9-6
rc: chi 31.9 - 20.8
ops: chi 931 - 831
der, chi 755 - 645

THE SEASON TO DATE: in their first 11 games vs st louis, the cubs have gotten eight game scores of 60 or above out of their rotation; the cardinals have gotten just one. cubs have now outhit the cards 112-76 — an advantage of three a game — outslugged them by 93 points, out-onbased them by 52. and they have created 20 more runs than st louis, 61-41 --- nearly two a game. they’ve done all this largely without sosa, wood, and prior. that they have squandered games seems to make the cubs more complacent, rather than less; they know they’ll have plenty more chances and that, sooner or later, the luck will even out. the cards meanwhile seem to sense the opposite — they are walking a pretty fine line, stealing wins by the barest of margins. they lead the cubs by three games but play with a healthy dose of insecurity — the knowledge that they cannot afford many mistakes. in the coming weeks they will channel this fear into a teamwide vigilance, a kind of hyperconcentration — the do-no-wrongness that lets you win games despite being outhit and outpitched. some dismiss it as luck, others exalt it as "character" or "professionalism" — but whatever it is, you can’t manufacture it; it evolves. many commentators remarked upon this quality late in the season, after it had reached full flower and the cards had played an entire summer of .750 baseball. but here, in early june, the cards are nothing special. they’re becoming special — and will make even more significant progress toward specialness in their next series vs the cubs.

JUN 7
stl 4 6 1
chi 3 9 1
w: carpenter 7-1
l: rusch 2-1
s: isringhausen 13
hr: rolen 14, sanders 10, patterson 7, rusch 1

JUN 8
stl 3 6 2
chi 7 13 1
w: clement 7-4
l: williams 3-6
hr: rolen 15, 16

JUN 9
stl 12 13 1
chi 4 10 1
w: morris 6-5
l:prior 0-1
hr: renteria 4, edmonds 11+12, patterson 8

JUN 10
stl 3 6 1
chi 12 15 0
w: zambrano 7-2
l: haren 0-1
hr: mabry 1, lankford 5, alou 15, lee 7, t. walker 7

cubs v cards, round 2

2005-03-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

the saga began with series 1, april 30-may 3 and continues here:

SERIES 2: MAY 21-23, at CHICAGO

CONTEXT: since splitting series 1 with the cubs, the cardinals have gone 9-6, winning 4 of 5 series — an early hint of the great consistency that will become the hallmark of their season. they remain 2.5 games out of 1st, in 4th place, but there are stirrings. the main thing stirring for the cubs, meanwhile, is the disabled list — sosa and wood have joined prior and grudzielanek there, and kent mercker will soon join them. for all that, they continue to win — 8-7 since the first meeting with st louis and 23-17 overall (a 92-win pace), in 2d place, a game behind the astros. they are still the team to beat; just gotta get healthy.

SERIES SUMMARY: cubs dominate again despite starting aaa callups sergio mitre and glendon rusch in the first two games of the series. mitre gets pounded in the opener, but once he leaves the mound the cubs smother the cardinal bats — stl goes 9 for 73 with 4 runs scored over the series' remaining 22 innings. but they score 7 during mitre’s five-inning stint, which nets them a win — and the cards are lucky to have it. despite holding the advantage in all three pitching pairings and facing an injury-thinned lineup, the cards gets outscored 11-17 --- and 4-14 when mitre's not pitching.

PIVOTAL GAME: the rubber game pits matt clement against matt morris, who at this juncture is still considered the cards’ ace. thru his 1st 9 starts he’s 4-3 with a 3.70 era, and he already has goosed the cubs once this season, throwing 9 shutout innings at them on may 2. but morris has established a troubling pattern of sucking every other start — game scores below 50 in his 1st 3d 5th 7th and 9th appearances, but above 60 in his 2d 4th 6th and 8th starts. this being his 10th start, morris is due to throw well — and he does, holding the cubs scoreless for six innings . . . . the 2d thru the 7th. but there is a 1st inning, and morris hurls it like sergio mitre: 4 runs on 5 hits (incl 2 doubles and a homer). clement, meanwhile, hurls like mark prior, holding the cards to three hits over eight innings. two of the hits are solo hr, which keeps the score close at 4-3 — but in the 9th joe borowski mows down the heart of the order to clinch the series for chicago.

BY THE NUMBERS:
runs: chi, 17-11
hits: chi, 29-19
hrs: chi, 6-4
rc: chi, 18.5 - 8.4
ops: chi, 853 - 600
der, chi 778 - 716

SEASON TO DATE: after seven games, the cubs have made it abundantly clear that they’re the better team. they have outscored the cardinals 31-21, outhit them 64-45, outhomered them 10-7, and out-ops’d them 785-620; they have outhit st louis six times and tied them once. altho they only lead the series 4-3, the margin will surely increase once the cubs get their players healthy and sort out their problems in the bullpen. as the clubs part ways, the cubs lead the cardinals by 2.5 and the astros by a game; they’re tied for 1st with the reds, 7 games over .500 despite their terrible run of injuries. the cardinals, at 23-21, don’t look they’ll achieve liftoff any time soon — not with morris and woody williams (1-5) struggling, and not with pujols edmonds and renteria all batting in the .270 range. a quarter of the way through the year, the team stands 4th in the league in runs scored and 11th in runs allowed (the cubs rank 5th and 1st, respectively). stl fans, if they’re honest, just hope the cards can stay competitive for the wildcard; the team clearly does not have the firepower to keep up with the cubs.

MAY 21
stl 7 10 1
chi 6 11 2
w: carpenter 5-1
l: mitre 2-3
s: isringhausen 8
hr: pujols 11, edmonds 10, barrett 6+7, walker 5, alou 12

MAY 22
stl 1 6 2
chi 7 8 0
w: rusch 2-0
l: williams 1-5
hr: hollandsworth 5

MAY 23
stl 3 3 0
chi 4 10 0
w: clement 6-3
l: morris 4-4
s: borowski 8

cubs v cards, round 1

2005-03-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

the cardinals so thoroughly whipped the cubs in the standings last year that it’s easy to overlook how close the teams played each other head to head. altho st. louis took the set 11-8, the cubs outscored the cardinals 94-92 — this despite getting just three starts from prior and wood. stl played some of its tightest (ie, most error-free) baseball vs chicago last year, while the cubs displayed the same train-wreck sloppiness that characterized the rest of their schedule. still, many of the games could have gone either way; had the cubs not f**ked up so reliably in game situations, the summer might have had a much, much different tenor in mid-america. with a card-cub dogfight looming in 05, a close look back at 04 might be instructive — and even if it isn’t, there are worse ways to wait out the exhibition season.

SERIES 1: APRIL 30-MAY 3, at ST LOUIS

CONTEXT: cubs enter the series in 1st place at 13-8 (7-3 over prev 10); this without mark prior, on the shelf since spring training. fifth-place stl is a cipher, its various new parts still trying to mesh — 11-11 overall record (5-5 prev 10) includes 2-5 showing vs lowly milwaukee and an 0-3 sweep at home vs houston, but a gaudy 7-2 mark on the road. cardinals have many questions and few answers — with the biggest question being, can they stay on the field with the cubs?

SERIES SUMMARY: cub pitchers dominate — 4 bb, 33 so in 30 innings pitched — but bullpen gives two games away in cards’ last at-bat. tied 3-3 in bottom 9 of the opener, the relievers issue four walks, the last to mike matheny with the sacks jammed to force in the winning run. tied 0-0 in bottom 10 of game 3, they walk the sacks full again, then finally get a strike over with scott rolen batting; he whacks gwh to warning track. despite outhitting stl in three of the four games (and tying in the fourth) and besting stl in ops by 100 points, the cubs still only manage a split.

PIVOTAL GAME: 1st game foreshadows the two teams’ divergent paths for ‘04. cubs get 8 strong innings from wood, outhit the cards 10-5, but piss the game away with little lapses. in the top of the 4th, with cubs leading 2-0, mike barrett misses a two-run hr by inches (foul ball); tho he doubles a few pitches later, matheney pegs a basestealer in the interim, spoiling the rally. in the bottom of the 6th an errant throw from wood sails down the right field line, putting womack on third base with nobody out (he scores on a sac fly — unearned run). in top 9 with the score tied, cubs get leadoff walk but alex gonzalez bunts into a dp (catcher short first), negating the two singles (barrett and hollandsworth) that immediately follow; todd walker grounds out to 2b to end the threat. bottom half, after leadoff walks to pujols and edmonds, la russa takes bat out of hands of red-hot scott rolen (27 rbi in 22 games) by ordering the bunt; successful execution puts winning run at third but (predictably) costs the cards’ ed renteria’s bat as well, as baker orders him intentionally walked to restore the force play. sanders obligingly pops up for the 2d out, and when latroy hawkins gets ahead of mike matheney 0-2 it appears the cards will blow the opportunity. instead hawkins throws four straight balls and gift-wraps the win for st louis.

so it will go for these two teams all season long — the cards defense taking runners off the basepaths at key junctures, the cubs’ head-case bullpenners generously giving away bases, runs, and victories.

BY THE NUMBERS:
runs: chi, 14-10
hits: chi, 35-26
hrs: chi, 4-3
rc: chi, 17.8 - 12.6
ops: chi, 738 - 634
der, stl 736 - 698
dp, stl 5-3

cub starters: 30 ip, 20 h, 6 er, 4 bb, 33 so
cub bullpen: 6 ip, 6 h, 4 er, 11 bb, 4 so

WHAT IF . . . the cubs had swept the series, as they had ev’y opportunity to do? such would have left the cards in last place, 7 games behind chi in the loss column and lower still in morale. woulda made for a far diff’nt season . . . . instead the teams parted as they convened, chi now tied for 1st w houston at 15-10, stl still 5th, still 2.5 gb, still trying to establish an identity.

how close did stl come to getting swept? compare their numbers for this 4-game set vs what they compiled while getting swept out of the world series:
v chi: 10 r, 126 ab, 26 h, 42 tb, 15 w, 37 k
v bos: 12 r, 126 ab, 24 h, 38 tb, 12 w, 32 k

APRIL 30
chi 3 10 1
stl 4 5 0
w: kline 1-1
l: farnsworth 0-1
hr: sanders 8

MAY 1
chi 4 9 0
stl 2 7 0
w: clement 4-1
l: suppan 2-3
s: borowski 6
hr: ramirez 7

MAY 2
chi 0 5 0
stl 1 5 1
w: isringhausen 2-0
l: farnsworth 0-2

MAY 3
chi 7 11 1
stl 3 8 0
w: maddux 2-2
l: marquis 1-2
hr: pujols 8, edmonds 6, t. walker 3, lee 3, sosa 6

larry leads off? yes!

2005-02-25T05:20:00.000-07:00

re the advisability of batting larry walker leadoff: the results are in.

james click of baseball prospectus generously ran a quick computer-simulation study on the cardinal batting order at my request. the data suggest that the cards might indeed score a few more runs with larry leading off — but only if the other big bats (pujols edmonds and rolen) bat immediately behind him in the two thru four slots. that’s the lineup josh schulz proposed at birdwatch on wednesday.

the advantage derived from this unorthodox sequence is not huge — a margin of 9 runs, on average, over the default setting (ie, eckstein, walkerpujolsrolenedmonds, grud’k/sanders or sanders/grud’k, molina, pitcher). that finding is consistent with what stewie13 has pointed out in comments here and at birdwatch, and what tangotiger said in a recent post at baseball musings: lineup manipulations can only net you, at best, an extra 5 to 15 runs. but tangotiger adds that 5 to 15 extra runs equals one extra win, and teams throw millions at ballplayers whose marginal value equals one win. if you can net a win for free just by moving guys around in the order, why wouldn’t you?

before we move on to the complete results of click’s quick study, i am compelled to advise you, per the blogger’s oath and the published regulations of the fcc and dept of homeland security, that the following exercise is completely theoretical and that the predicted 9-run gain may be as ephemeral as iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. moreover, click offers a caveat of his own: “Keep in mind that this isn’t meant to map to actual runs scored, but is just for comparative purposes between the various lineups. Finally, the standard deviation is around 40-45 runs, so while lineup C certainly stands out from the rest, the confidence level is low.”

ev’yone get it? this is for entertainment purposes only.

i asked click to run comparisons on five diff’nt batting orders. he ran each one for a thousand seasons, then sent me the low, mean, and high run totals (per 162 games) for each order. in reverse order of potency, with mean averages, the lineups were:

LINEUP D: 964 runs
1 eck’n / 2 grud’k / 3 pujols / 4 edmonds / 5 rolen / 6 walker / 7 sanders / 8 molina / 9 pitcher (low 826, high 1133)

LINEUP A: 970 runs
1 eck’n / 2 walker / 3 pujols / 4 edmonds / 5 rolen / 6 grud’k / 7 sanders / 8 molina / 9 pitcher (low 830, high 1120)

LINEUP B: 970 runs
1 walker / 2 eck’n / 3 pujols / 4 edmonds / 5 rolen / 6 grud’k / 7 sanders / 8 molina / 9 pitcher (low 827, high 1117)

LINEUP E: 975 runs
1 walker / 2 pujols / 3 edmonds / 4 rolen / 5 sanders / 6 molina / 7 pitcher / 8 grud’k / 9 eck’n (low 847, high 1101)

LINEUP C: 979 runs
1 walker / 2 pujols / 3 edmonds / 4 rolen / 5 grud’k / 6 sanders / 7 molina / 8 pitcher / 9 eck’n (low 840, high 1143)

i note, first of all, that the question that launched this inquiry — would the cards score more by flip-flopping walker with eckstein in the top two slots in the order? — is completely moot according to click’s study: both variations averaged 970 runs (lineups A and B). i note further that the “best” lineup, C, is in fact merely a renumbered carbon-copy of the “default” lineup, A. think daylight savings time — we follow the same cycle but arbitrarily displace the starting point by one unit. the “day” isn’t any longer, but by “springing forward” from david to larry we allocate the sunshine more advantageously . . . . . which in this case means (i think) that we allocate about 60 - 80 of eckstein’s at bats to walker pujols edmonds and/or rolen.

does that not sound like a complete no-brainer thing to do? even if it didn’t net you a single run, wouldn’t any baseball fan at a given ballgame rather see one of those four guys get an extra at-bat in the 9th inning, as opposed to eckstein?

add’l thoughts: pujols does not fit the ideal profile of a #2 hitter, as defined by tangotiger’s studies; he hits too many hrs and doesn’t draw enough walks. jimmy edmonds more closely matches the thumbnail, as does walker himself. but if you line walker and edmonds up 1-2, it leaves the cards vulnerable to lefty starters and left-left relief specialists (this pair of batters alone could keep jesse orosco and john franco on mlb payrolls until their iras mature.) might it be permissible to sneak, ahem, eck’n or grud’k into the leadoff hole vs a starting lhp? . . . . here is where we begin to run into the limitations of our study, which click himself would be the first to concede. the simulation program omits dozens of variables that might change the “optimal” lineup on a given day — platoon data, batter v pitcher data, ballpark considerations, left/right alternation, etc etc. it also does not account for pinch hitters, the double-switch (a la russa perennial), or even such quaint phenomena as “hot streaks” and “slumps” — which used to be very legitimate lineup-selection criteria back before the sabrevolution.

in any case, whatever lineup la russa employs today, we know he’s going to use a diff’nt one tomorrow, and yet another one the day after; that’s just tony. do i think he should use lineup C above as often as possible? hell yes. but if he does it even once, the cards damn well better win that day — ‘coz if they lose he’ll never hear the end of it.

and we’ll never see that lineup again.

larry begs off . . . .

2005-02-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

if this becomes more serious, i'll have to start my "reggie leads off" campaign

larry leads off . . . . pujol in two hole

2005-02-24T05:20:00.000-07:00

over at the birdwatch, josh schultz offers a larry walker leadoff scenario that's even more unorthodox, and likely more potent, than the one i proposed t'other day: bat larry, albert, jimmy, and scotty in the first four slots in the order, with the pitcher hitting 8th and eckstein 9th. like this:

1. walker, rf
2. pujols, 1b
3. edmonds, cf
4. rolen, 3b
5. grud'k, 2b
6. sanders, rf
7. molina, c
8. mulder, p
9. eck'n, ss

after the 1st cycle through, the lineup would be functionally equivalent to the more traditional:

eck'n, ss
walker, rf
pujols, 1b
edmonds, cf
rolen, 3b
grud'k, 2b
sanders, rf
molina, c
mulder, p

with such a lineup, the first four cardinals to bat in ev'y game would have .400 obps or close thereto, and walker pujols and edmnds would get more late-inning at-bats over the course of the year while eckstein would get fewer. what sucks about that?

postscript: matthew leach addresses a question today at mlb.com about larry walker as cleanup hitter.

placido no like home

2005-02-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

placido polanco wants out of philly --- would you give up jeff suppan to bring him back to st louis? so asks redbird reasoning in his post today. i for one wouldn't make the trade, even as skeptical as i am about the cards' middle infield --- because i'm more skeptical of the pitchers' durability. but the post is a good read, and it raises one of the more upbeat possibilities of 2005: if things break just right the cards could find themselves in the enviable position of having a proven mlb arm to dangle for trade bait at midseason.

mlb dot communism

2005-02-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

parity in baseball? it's coming, predicts tim marchman in the new republic --- and he gives the credit/blame to bud selig, the internet, and mlb.com. "In 2003 [mlb.com] became profitable," marchman notes, "and this winter it made a series of deals that lay the foundation for it to become even more powerful in the years to come." also: "Increasingly, MLB.com has a finger in every online baseball pie, which is why CEO Bob Bowman's prediction of 30 percent to 50 percent revenue growth every year for the next five years doesn't look so out of line. Such rosy forecasts may have something to do with rumors, frequently cited over the last year in outlets such as Wired and USA Today, that MLB.com is going to make an IPO."

article makes selig sound downright visionary, which seriously undermines its credibility . . . . . worth a read nev'theless.

larry leads off

2005-02-21T14:59:00.000-07:00

recent study at baseball prospectus examines lineup construction and apparently asks some unorthodox questions — viz., would the giants score more runs with barry bonds in the leadoff slot? you can’t read the article, less’n you have a subscription (which i don’t), but baseball musings has an excerpt and some commentary. ditto only baseball matters, with a followup email exchange between perricone and the study’s author.

which leads me into my annual pout about la russa’s underutilization of the leadoff hole, and an unorthodox question of my own: how would the cardinals fare with larry walker leading off?

i ask because walker excels at the one skill a leadoff man has to have: on-base ability. he has a career obp of .401, which i grant is inflated by 10 seasons at coors field. but his obp away from coors over the last 6 seasons (covering 1255 at-bats) is .382 — with a high of .416 and a low of .370. how good is .370? over the last 20 years only two stl leadoff men have beat it: frankie vina in 2001 (.380) and delino deshields in 1998 (.371).

though womack did a surprisingly nice job last year, he still only ranked 4th on the team in runs scored, tied for 4th in OBP, and fifth in times on base. it’s that last statistic that really tells the tale. like most cardinal leadoff men of recent memory, womack did not excel at his primary offensive task — not even while setting career highs in batting average and obp. he scored 91 runs, a good total — but with three mvp candidates batting behind him, wouldn’t a really good leadoff man have cracked 100 runs by mid-august?

eckstein is no worse than womack, but he’s no better either — last year his times on base (205) and runs scored (92) were nearly identical to tony’s. and his obps are trending downward, just .325 and .339 the last couple of seasons vs a career mark of .347.

what’s the diff’nce between .340 and .380 in the leadoff hole? over 650 plate appearances, it’s about 25 times on base. assuming equivalence among all other stats (steals, extra-base power, etc), the 25 extra times on base translates into roughly 10 to 15 runs. that alone is reason enough to lead larry off, imho. but the case gets stronger yet when you factor in walker’s superior extra-base power. that is, "on-base" usually means first base for eckstein, whereas for walker it often means scoring position or, better yet, a trot around the bags. consider: last year in 608 plate appearances, eckstein propelled himself into scoring position via stolen base or extra-base hit 43 times. walker (away from coors only) did it 34 times — in only 229 plate appearances. true up the plate appearances and walker would propel himself into scoring position 90 times to eckstein’s 43 — which tells us the diff’nce between eckstein’s .340 obp and walker’s .380 obp is going to be a lot more than 10 to 15 runs. more likely we’re talking 25 to 35 runs. and a figure that big has got to show up in the standings.

those of you who’ve read my concerns about eckstein’s glove are now going to accuse me of denigrating the poor bastard’s bat, too. but i’m really not. i’m saying eckstein’s probably going to give you in the neighborhood of 90 runs out of the leadoff hole — but walker’s going to give you 120. i’m saying 90 runs is nothing to brag about when you’ve got murderer’s row batting behind you. . . . . . really, all i’m saying is that la russa should flip-flop his first two hitters, bat walker in front of eckstein instead of the other way around. one advantage you gain by doing so is that you occasionally get some value out of one of eckstein’s outs. in the one case, larry hits a leadoff double, scoots to third on eckstein’s chopper to 2d, scores on a fly to center. in the other, eckstein leads off with a chopper to 2d, walker hits a one-out double, and then gets stranded. same double by walker, same groundout by eckstein — but a diff’t result.

we’ll never get to test this theory in real life, because la russa is about as likely to lead off with walker as he is to confess that he personally jabbed a steroid syringe into mcgwire’s ass. but if anybody out there has access to one of those high-powered simulations and wouldn't mind running a buncha seasons — half with walker batting leadoff, half with eckstein — i’d be curious to see what the computer showed.

reading list

2005-02-18T04:04:00.000-07:00

too bizzy to write, but i can still read.

a quick followup to my post on bing devine / brock-for-broglio: mike’s baseball rants rates lou brock as one of the three best in-season acquisitions of all time, counting only trades made after june 1. brock contributed 22 win shares to the ’64 cards . . . .

enlightening post at the birdwatch about the cards’ geezer outfielders — writer named mo boiler looks at similar players at corresponding ages to set some likely parameters for sander/edmond/walker performance this season.

another worthwhile exercise at redbird reasoning — he’s looked at the top 3 nl central contenders, using projected win shares to get a gauge. he sez: cards and cubs 95 wins, astros 88.

item: john sickels’ new blogsite has daric barton as the a’s #2 prospect, with a solid A grade.

swap me before i kill again

2005-02-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

there’s a fun post at hardball times about trading - rates the winners and losers, franchise by franchise, going all the way back to 1960. the interesting thing about the cardinals is not where they rank — by this data they're middle of the pack, have basically broken even — but rather the sheer number of deals they have transacted. by this research, since 1960 the cardinals have made more trades than any team in the majors except the mets — 463 swaps, which works out to just over 10 a season.

can that be right? 10 trades seems high for a single year, let alone for a yearly average. so i decided to visit retrosheet, the source of hardball times’ data, to do a quick spot-check. chose at random a year from my youth — 1975, when i was 12 — and counted ’em up. and i’ll be damned if the cardinals didn’t make 17 trades that year — eight of them during the season. here they are (players to be named later in parens):

Feb 14 Stan Papi to Montreal for Craig Caskey
Mar 29 Danny Godby to Boston for Danny Cater
Apr 4 (Jim Willoughby) for Mario Guerrero
May 9 Larry Herndon and Luis Gonzalez to San Francisco for Ron Bryant
May 18 Ted Martinez to Oakland Athletics for Steve Staniland and (Mike Barlow)
May 27 (Doug Howard) to Cleveland for Luis Alvarado
May 28 Elias Sosa and Ray Sadecki to Atlanta for Ron Reed and (Wayne Nordhagen)
June 4 Ed Brinkman and Tommy Moore to Texas for Willie Davis
June 25 (Mike Barlow) to Houston for Mike Easler
June 30 (Bill Parsons) and cash to ChiS for Buddy Bradford
July 25 Jim Dwyer to Montreal for Larry Lintz
Oct 20 Willie Davis to San Diego for Dick Sharon
Oct 28 Larry Lintz to Oakland for Charlie Chant
Oct 28 Mike Garman and (Bobby Hrapmann) to ChiC for Don Kessinger
Dec 8 Ken Reitz to San Francisco for Pete Falcone
Dec 9 Ron Reed to Philadelphia for Mike Anderson
Dec 12 Buddy Bradford and Greg Terlecky to ChiS for Lee Richard.
Dec 22 Mick Kelleher to ChiC for Vic Harris

imho, this list of transactions appears to be the product of a diseased mind. consider first the number of players who were acquired and dealt away within the twelvemonth — five on’m (barlow, reed, davis, bradford, lintz). consider further the pointless, fevered traffic in bad utility infielders— out with stan papi, ted martinez, ed brinkman, and mick kelleher, in with mario guerrero, luis alvarado, lee richard, and vic harris. is there a peso’s worth of difference among any of these guys? it looks like bing had some kind of compulsive need to roil the roster — kind of like a sick kid has a compulsive need to pick at his chicken pox. surely he couldn’t have thought he was improving the team . . . . ?

with ten minutes’ further digging, i found that 1975 was anything but an unusual year for bing devine. the following year he made another 17 trades, most of them as pointless as his ’75 deals, then tacked on 19 useless swaps in 1977. his "career high" came in 1973 — a mind-numbing 21 trades in that calendar year. four of those 21 deals included a pitcher named mike nagy, whom devine acquired twice and dealt away twice in the course of 1973.

between 1972 and 1977, devine authored a staggering 104 trades — 17 a year. during the full run of his second term as cardinals’ gm (1968-1977), he made 147 trades — 14.7 a year. that’s not normal. per the hardball times article, the per-team average in the 1970s was about 3 trades a season. stan musial, whose term as stl’s gm (1964-1967) separates the two bing devine eras, made only 9 trades during his three-year reign (including the deals that brought roger maris and orlando cepeda). and after devine left in early 1978 and john claiborne took over, the diarrheal spewing of transactions abruptly stopped. whitey herzog, considered a great wheeler-dealer, made only 22 trades during four years-plus as the cardinals’ gm.

so der bingle — what gives? here’s a theory, completely off the cuff and worth exactly what you paid for it. devine’s last trade before he got fired in august 1964 was arguably the most famous trade of all time: brock for broglio. other trades may have been more lopsided (see mike’s baseball rants for a top-20 list), but brock-for-broglio became enshrined as a symbol of the cubs’ futility — and since cub futility is one of the longest-running and most popular shows in the major leagues, brock-for-broglio occupies the same niche as an iconic broadway tune. you know — "yankee doodle" isn’t the best song ever written, but everybody knows it. . . .

anyway, i digress. when the cardinals rallied to win the 1964 pennant, the deposed devine became something of a martyr — and brock-for-broglio his badge of vindication. by the time devine returned the stl front office in november 1967, brock-for-broglio had played a central role in two cardinal world series triumphs. even at that early date, it was part of baseball lore — and that, i think, drove bing devine partially insane. perhaps he thought he had a special genius for talent evaluation and was determined to prove it by finding another brock, even if it meant sifting through a haystack of vic harrises and lee richards and mario guerreros. or, conversely, maybe brock-broglio burdened devine with a reputation for genius he could never live up to, and so he played the role as best he could by trading a lot, if not particularly well.

but most likely devine was just an old-school gm who made trades because that’s all gms had to do in those days. they didn’t have free agents to woo or arbitration hearings to prepare for; they spent their time smoking cigars and chomping red meat and drinking martinis with other gms, and --- sometimes for lack of anything better to do -- making trades. what, you wanna swap ballplayers? sure, what the hell, you take this guy and i’ll take that one. . . . like flipping baseball cards. something to pass the time.

for the record, trader jock has averaged a healthy 6 trades a year as the cardinals’ gm.

deranged: eckstein, chapter 5

2005-02-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

not to sound like chicken little . . . but the more i delve into david eckstein’s fielding stats, the more i find not to like.

this despite some reassuring words from black hawk waterloo, author of the excellent angels blog chronicles of the lads. per the ongoing discussion of eckstein herein (see posts of feb 8, feb 6, feb 1, and jan 9), waterloo writes: "I was very surprised to see Eckstein fare so poorly by David Pinto's method [ie, Probability Method of Range]. Most others have him right around average last year, and he looks pretty good to the naked eye (which of course can be deceiving). He doesn't have a lot of lateral range, but in the past he has positioned himself well, and despite his lousy arm gets the outs that it seems he should. . . . I think Cardinals fans will be more than pleased with his effort afield." adds waterloo: "The Angel pitching staff has been *heavily* flyball oriented the past few years, so there just aren't as many groundballs for their infielders to field. So range factor will undervalue the Angel IFs just a bit ..."

rob haneberg makes a similar point over at the outstanding birdwatch blogplex, in a comment to the feb 8 post: "MGL's UZR and Tom Tippett's Diamond Mind ranking say Eckstein should be at least average in 2005. . . .Eck's range factor is below average but the Angels have had a flyball staff, something like 28th in the majors in GB/FB ratio in 2004, according to ESPN.com."

those are excellent points, from guys who are far stat-savvier than i. but i’m still concerned about eckstein’s range, and here’s why: in all four of his big-league seasons, eckstein has made fewer plays at shortstop than the guys backing him up at the position.

and it’s not even very close. over his career, eckstein has made 4.21 plays per 9 innings (vs a league average of 4.54 plays per 9). in that same four-year period, the angels’ other shortstops — playing behind the same flyball-oriented staff as eckstein — have made 4.81 plays per 9, a spread of more than half a play per game. here’s the data:

ANGELS SS, 2001-2004:
eckstn 4503 inn, 776 putouts 1332 assists = 4.21 plays per 9 innings
others* 1268 inn, 277 putouts 400 assists = 4.81 plays per 9 innings

* alfredo amezaga, chone figgins, shane halter, benji gil, wilson delgado, jose nieves, troy glaus

i know, i know — using range factor these days is sort of like using a compaq 286. ev’body’s moved on to vastly more powerful computational tools like uzr, pmr, defensive win shares, and so forth to measure defensive performance. the problem with those methods is that they are so often in conflict — a gold glover by uzr is too often doctor strangeglove according to pmr or dws — that you never know which one(s) you can trust. and they’re so new that it’s difficult to benchmark the numbers. range factor may be primitive, but at least it’s transparent; you don’t have to be a math ph.d. to understand how it works. i think as long as you work within its limitations, range factor can still tell a truth or two

one of the limitations is that you’re usually not comparing apples to apples — the fielding context (ballpark, pitching staff tendencies, teammates’ fielding range) varies from player to player at a given position, rendering comparisons suspect. but in this case we’re comparing a group of players who did their fielding within the same context — same team, same pitchers, same ballpark, same playing surface. and the comparison doesn’t favor eck —indeed, he has underperformed his understudies every single season of his career. the year-by-year breakdown:

2001 deficit: -0.5 pp9
eckstn 1051 inn, 178 po, 333 a, 4.37 pp9
others 387 inn, 87 po, 122 a, 4.87 pps

2002 deficit: -0.83 pp9
eckstn 1276 inn, 207 po, 397 a, 4.26 pp9
others 175 inn, 35 po, 64 a, 5.09 pp9

2003 deficit: -0.07 pp9
eckstn 985 inn, 193 po, 293 a, 4.44 pp9
others 445 inn, 95 po, 128 a, 4.51 pp9

2004 deficit: -1.19 pp9
eckstn 1191 inn, 198 po, 309 a, 3.83 pp9
others 262 inn, 60 po, 86 a, 5.02 pp9

that sure looks like a pattern . . . . true, the backups logged limited playing time in each season, so random chance might explain the disparity for any year taken in isolation. but over the four seasons the backups have amassed an entire season’s worth of innings — and their range factor over that "season" is .37 pp9 better than eckstein’s best season.

which leaves me a lot less persuaded that eckstein’s apparent lack of range can be explained by the angels’ flyball-oriented pitching staff. he may in fact be a more effective defender than his range factors suggest — but i’m still looking for evidence to support the notion.

mark down

2005-02-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

re mcgwire and steroids: this column by bryan burwell of the post-dispatch sums up my position.

range: muse you can use

2005-02-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

there’s a good debate about the cost of eckstein’s range deficit ongoing at baseball musings --- really smart guys who actually understand math. check out the february 7 and february 8 posts over there, and the attendant comments. the consensus seems to be that 44 singles should cost somewhere in the range (very broadly speaking) of 15 to 35 runs. baseball musing’s author, david pinto, used bill james’s runs created formula to peg the cost of 44 singles at 22 runs. "So estimates from 18 to 30 do appear to be in the correct range," he concludes.

however, both pinto and chronicles of the lads, whose calculations placed the alarming 33-run price tag on eckstein’s weak range, advise us to use the data with caution. says pinto: "Because Eckstein is getting 44 fewer outs doesn't mean those outs aren't being picked up by other fielders. . . . There are going to grounders where both the third baseman and the shortstop have non-zero probabilities of fielding the ball. If the third baseman, due to superior range, cuts in front of the shortstop often he'll take outs away from the middleman. In most cases these should even out, but in some situations the shortstop will appear not to get to balls that indeed are outs."

speaking of rangy 3d basemen, chronicles of the lads’ data shows scott rolen to be the most valuable cardinal gloveman, hands down. the chronicler calculates that rolen took 23 runs off the board, which i believe translates into roughly 3 wins in the standings. the chronicler, using pinto's data, has his calculations up for all positions except left field; here’s how the cards come out:

1b pujols +7
2b womack -2
ss edgar -3
3b scotty +23
lf ?????
cf edmonds +6
rf sanders -9

by this method (pending the lf calculations), the cards defense, as a collective, saved 22 runs — about what rolen saved by himself. in other words, the rest of the cards’ strong defenders were canceled out by commensurately weak ones. defense is so flipping hard to measure, i wouldn't take these conclusions as gospel --- but i wouldn't just shrug them off as meaningless either. the cards lost two gold glovers in the offseason; the defense is an enormous concern. pinto and chronicles' range/run estimates may have limitations, but they provide an excellent starting point for understanding what may be the 2005 cardinals' make-or-break issue.

when it range, it pours

2005-02-06T23:20:00.000-07:00

re the cost of dave eckstein’s poor range, a poster calling him/herself "anolis" asks an intelligent question:

"If I read this correctly, Eckstein made 44 less outs than might have been expected, and the analysis suggests that this translated into allowing 33 more runs that expected. Can this be correct? Since the outs that Eckstein missed almost surely turned into singles, is the expected value of turning an out into a single 3/4 of a run? Seems high to me."

yeah, me too — at first. the 33-run estimate comes from the chronicles of the lads, an anaheim angels blogger who is bravely/foolishly attempting to draw meaningful conclusions from defensive statistics. the chronicler explicitly posits that an out by a shortstop prevents 3/4 of a run — i quote:

"I turned to Chris Dial's methodology, in which a run value is assigned to each out a defender makes. For instance, 98.7% of outs made by a SS prevent a single. A single is worth .47 runs. Each out is also just that: an out, which has a value of roughly .28 runs. So, 98.7% of the outs made by a SS prevent .75 runs. (The other 1.3% account for 1.06 runs each, because sometimes those screamers by the SS get through the gap and go to wall for extra bases.)"

in other words, a routine 6-3 groundout moves an inning one out closer to completion (preventing .28 runs) and wipes out the run-scoring potential of a single (.47 runs); add .28 and .47, and you get .75. i hear those gears turning, anolis — now you want to know who the hell chris dial is and whether his methodology makes any sense — and unfortunately, i can’t answer either question. but here's the link if you want to check his math.

i can however apply some common sense, and the exercise encourages me that .75 runs per single is in fact a reasonable estimate. let’s begin with an easy case: bases loaded, two outs, grounder up the middle — shortstop comes up a step slow and the ball trickles through. the hit results in two runs — and potentially more, because the inning continues. every run that scores subsequently would/could have been prevented by a rangier shortstop, so the cost of that particular grounder is over 2.0 runs.

here’s another case: men on first and second, one out, groundball up the middle. if the ss fields it, it’s a double play and the inning is over; if the ball gets through, one run scores, a runner winds up at third with one out, and the batter’s on at first base — the runner at third will score about .75 of the time, and the runner at first will score a certain percentage of the time as well. add it all up and the failure to reach that hypothetical grounder costs, on average, right around 2.0 runs.

of course, there will also be hits that dribble through with two outs and none on, and no harm will come of them. but if you average out a small number of high-cost cases with a large number of low-cost ones, it can still average out to .75. look at it this way: of the 44 singles that result from eckstein's range deficit, a certain portion will trigger big innings, a larger portion will trigger small rallies, and the lion’s share will have no impact at all. let’s make some conservative estimates. say only a third of the bad-range basehits (brbs) lead to any scoring at all — that’s 15 instances, or once every 10 games. let’s further suppose that five of those brbs cost just one run, another five cost two, and the last five cost three runs . . . . . well, that adds up to 30 runs, very close to chronicler’s 33-run estimate. does three runs seem an unreasonable impact to assign a lonely dribbler through the infield? i don’t think so. it’s a cherished cliché that you can’t give a team four outs in an inning; the extra out turns small rallies into large rallies, or non-scoring innings into one- and two-run innings. in that regard, a groundball that’s missed because of poor range is the same as a groundball that’s booted for an error. either way, it’s an extra out.

in fact, errors provide another useful "common-sense" check on the chronicler’s 0.75-run estimate. if we accept that errors are analagous to bad-range basehits — both are outs the defense fails to make — then we can learn much by quantifying the defensive cost of a single error. and that’s easy. we know how many errors are committed over the course of a season, and we know how many runs result from those defensive lapses — they’re called "unearned runs." divide the one into the other, and there’s your value. in the american league in 2004, there were 1520 errors resulting in 900 unearned runs — or .59 runs per error. in the national league, 1646 errors led to 1001 unearned runs, or .61 runs per error.

that’s not quite .75 runs per misplay, although it’s in the ballpark. but keep in mind that some errors don’t put a runner on base, and thus are not completely analogous to bad-range basehits. i’m talking about pickoff attempts that get thrown down the rightfield line, singles that roll through an outfielder’s legs and let the batter reach second or third, relay throws that end up in the dugout. those errors inflate the scoring potential of runners who’ve already reached safely, but they do not turn negative scoring potential (ie, outs) into positive scoring potential (ie, baserunners). the errors in this category — and i have no idea what fraction of the total error population they account for — are less damaging than either a booted groundball or a brb, and hence they lower the average cost of errors relative to brbs. if we adjust for this factor, we move some distance closer to .75 runs / error.

so i have convinced myself — if not you, anolis — that every ball that grazes eckstein's outstretched glove as it bounces past will cost the cardinals 3/4 of a run.

and btw anolis ---- thx for the birthday wishes.

the many and the few

2005-02-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

i promise this’ll be the last of these “similar teams” posts for a while; i’m just cleaning out the file. today we look at teams that, like the 2004 cardinals, led the league both in runs scored and fewest runs allowed. the cards were the 10th such team since 1970; how did the previous nine fare the year after? let’s start by naming the teams, with their records:

2001 mariners, 116-46
1998 yankees, 114-48
1995 indians, 100-44 (113-49 extrapolated to 162 games)
1988 mets, 100-60
1984 tigers, 104-58
1978 dodgers, 95-67
1974 dodgers, 102-60
1971 orioles, 101-57
1970 orioles, 109-53

an illustrious group — eight won 100+ games, seven won pennants, and three won world titles. as a group they averaged 105 wins . . . but in the year after achieving this rare feat they notched on average only 90.5 wins. five of the nine teams won fewer than 90, and only one topped 100. six of the nine teams missed out on the playoffs the following year. their records, with playoff teams in bold:

2002 mariners, 93-69
1999 yankees, 98-64
1996 indians, 99-62
1989 mets, 87-75
1985 tigers, 84-77
1979 dodgers, 79-83
1975 dodgers, 88-74
1972 orioles, 80-74 (84-78 extrapolated to 162 games)
1971 orioles, 101-57

2002 mariners - 6th runs, 5th runs allowed
1999 yankees - 3rd runs, 2nd runs allowed
1996 indians - 2nd runs, 1st runs allowed
1989 mets - 3rd runs, 2nd runs allowed
1985 tigers - 6th runs, 4th runs allowed
1979 dodgers - 2nd runs, 9th runs allowed
1975 dodgers - 8th runs, 1st runs allowed
1972 orioles - 8th runs, 1st runs allowed
1971 orioles - 1st runs, 1st runs allowed

note that the three playoff returnees continued to excel in both phases of the game, while the teams that slumped — with one exception — slumped more in the batter’s box than on the mound. indeed, two teams (75 dodgers, 72 orioles) missed the playoffs despite leading again in least runs allowed, and only one team ranked lower than 5th the following year. the average rank for non-playoff repeaters was 6th place in runs, 4th in runs allowed; taking the nine teams as a whole, the avgs are 4th place in runs, 3d in pitching.

implications? for all the worry about the arms, it may be the cardinal bats that decide the team's fate. not a given that they're gonna produce 850 runs again . . . . and if they don't, look out.

walking in their footsteps . . . .

2005-02-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

left hanging from sunday’s primer on 100-win teams: do the 2004 cardinals bear any meaningful resemblance to any recent 100-game-winners? . . . . well yes, matterafact they do, if we judge "resemblance" on the following set of criteria:

1) wins
2) wins above/below pythagorean w-l
3) games ahead of 2d-place team
4) wins the year prior to 100-win season
5) improvement over previous year
6) order of finish previous year

by this gauge, the team most similar to the 2004 cardinals was the la russa-managed 1988 oakland athletics, tony’s first world series team. here’s how they match up:

1988 OAKLAND ATHLETICS
wins: stl 105, oak 104
actual vs pythagorean: stl +5, oak +4
games ahead: stl 13, oak 13
prev year wins: stl 85, oak 81
improvement: stl +20, oak +23
prev year finish: stl 3d, oak 3d

here are some more similarities.
· both teams excelled in hitting and pitching — cards led league in runs and finished 2d in era, a’s 1st in era and 2d in runs
· both had deep, shut-down bullpens
· both teams abruptly stopped hitting in the world series and lost in lopsided fashion.

and here’s a key diff’nce:
· the a’s had four everyday players aged 25 or younger (canseco, mcgwire, walt weiss, and stan javier) and got only 964 at-bats from players aged 34 or older. their position players averaged 28.1 years of age. the cardinals last year averaged 30.7 years of age and had only one regular 25 or younger (pujols). they got 1847 at-bats from players aged 34 or older.

what the a’s did next: returned to the playoffs three of the ensuing four years, winning two more pennants (’89-’90) and one world championship (’89).

1984 DETROIT TIGERS
wins: stl 105, det 104
actual vs pythagorean: stl +5, det +5
games ahead: stl 13, det 15
prev year wins: stl 85, det 92
improvement: stl +20, det +12
prev year finish: stl 3d, det 2d

additional similarities:
· the tigers led the league in runs scored and fewest runs allowed
· they had three gold glovers (lance parrish, lou whitaker, and alan trammell)
· they had a hall of fame manager (sparky)

key diff’nces:
· like the ’88 a’s, the tigers were much younger than the cards — position players averaged 28.5 years, only 577 at-bats from players aged 34 and up. their five best hitters all fell between 26 and 29 years old.
· they won the world series

what the tigers did next: finished 3rd the next two years, with 84 and 87 wins (15 games and 8.5 games out of first, respecitvely). in 1987 they won another division crown, beating toronto on the last day of the season in one of history’s best-ever pennant races. in 1988 they won 88 games and finished second by a game to boston. in 1989 they collapsed, finishing last at 59-103, 30 games out.

2002 ATLANTA BRAVES
wins: stl 105, atl 101
actual vs pythagorean: stl +5, atl +5
games ahead: stl 13, atl 19
prev year wins: stl 85, atl 88
improvement: stl +20, atl +13
prev year finish: stl 3d, atl 1st

add’l similarities:
· just as old as the cards — avg age nearly identical (30.6); just two regulars 25 or under, with the rest over 30; 1252 at-bats from the 34-and-up set
· like the cards, the 2002 braves had been deemed also-rans by preseason pundits. their main division rival (ie, mets) had made splashy offseason acquisitions (bob alomar, mo vaughan, j burnitz) while the braves essentially stood pat.
· hall of fame manager

key diff’nces:
· imbalanced: led the league in era but finished 10th in runs scored
· unstable: replaced four-fifths of their rotation the ensuing season, plus two position starters
· two hall of famers in rotation (glavine and maddux)

what the braves did next: won division titles in 03 and 04 with 101 and 96 wins, respectively. the braves got younger in 03, with four regulars under 30 years old, and younger still in 04, fielding seven 20somethings and one 32-year-old (chipper jones). the braves’ pitching corps experienced a similar turnover.

1980 NEW YORK YANKEES
wins: stl 105, nyy 103
actual vs pythagorean: stl +5, nyy +6
games ahead: stl 13, nyy 3
prev year wins: stl 85, nyy 89
improvement: stl +20, ny +14
prev year finish: stl 3d, nyy 4th

add’l similarity:
· old bats: only one regular 25 or under, four aged 34 and up, with the geezer cohort contributing 2001 at-bats

difference:
· old arms: the yankees got nearly half their starts (76) from pitchers aged 35 or older. one of the old guys (tommy john) won 22 games, and another (rudy may) won 15; the remaining two (el tiante and gaylord perry) went a combined 12-13.

what the yankees did next: went to the world series in strike-marred 1981, then settled in for a decade of above-averageness — four straight finishes of 2d or 3d place, seven straight years between 79 and 97 wins.

these comparisons only go so far, so i’m not drawing firm conclusions. but it is at least encouraging that all four of these similar 100-win teams remained very competitive for quite a few years. three returned to the postseason the following year, with two getting to the world series; and two kept themselves at or above the 100-win mark for several more seasons. i’m not expecting the cardinals to do that — they’re too old — but these four models suggest that 90-95 wins remains a realistic expectation, at least for this year.

range redux

2005-02-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

a while back i guesstimated that david eckstein's limited range at shortstop "might cost the cardinals between 35 and 100 base hits — ie, 35-100 balls that edgar would have gloved."

in his post today at baseball musings, david pinto makes a similar guess. having examined minutely detailed data from the 2004 season, pinto estimates that eckstein cost the angels about 45 outs. further number-crunching at an angels blog called chronicles of the lads suggests that eck was worth negative 21 runs to the angel defense. i quote:

"David Eckstein had 3,562 balls in play against him. He made outs on 356 of these when about 400 would have been expected, based on the probabilities observed from 2002 through 2004. Using Dial's methodology, we find that he prevented 268.43 runs where 301.81 would have been expected; so he's -33.37 Runs Against Expected. We convert that to 4,000 BIP to get a number of -37.47. However, as the average SS was -16.22, that makes Eck -21.26 against average, which is pretty bad."

more than "pretty" bad, actually --- the only shortstops who cost their teams more runs were nomar garciaparra and felipe lopez. the same post shows edgar renteria in the middle of the pack at negative three runs, which means (if you buy all this analysis) that the switch to eckstein will cost the cards something like 18 runs ---- or 2 to 3 games in the standings.

if stl misses the playoffs by 2 games, we'll know whose fault it is.

the devil in sammy sosa

2005-01-31T13:06:00.000-07:00

the sosa trade calls to mind the cardinals’ divestment of joaquin andujar in december 1985. like slammin sammy, wacky jack was a star player sent packing to purify the soul of a disgraced team — the ’85 cardinals, who choked away the world series that year against kansas city. and, like sammy, andujar precipitated his own departure by committing an unforgivable breach of protocol — in his case, flying into a rage at don denkinger with the cards trailing 8-0 in game 7. during his tantrum he bumped denkinger twice; two days later, mlb suspended andujar for the first 10 games of the ’86 season, and gussie busch immediately pronounced one of those fatwas he used to issue periodically against players fallen from his favor. and so, on the first day of the winter meetings, dal maxvill obediently sent andujar packing to oakland for mike heath and tim conroy.

both the sosa and andujar transactions are best regarded as exorcisms. the players had similar dispositions — self-centered and attention-starved, given to iconoclastic gestures and/or utterances — and while such qualities might be winked at in a winning clubhouse, they become intolerable after a team’s character and guts have been exposed as deficient. worse than intolerable, in fact — they become dangerous, threatening to his teammates’ now-fragile emotional equilibrium. the alien traits come to be seen as the sole source of the team’s failure, and their removal is considered essential to the healing process --- also a satisfying outlet for pent-up anger, frustration and self-doubt. and there's probably some truth to the notion, however based in sensibility (rather than sense) it may be, that purging can hasten a ballclub's recovery. does anybody think the cardinals would have returned to the world series in 1987 with wacky jack andujar still on the roster?

when a team falls apart, the ritual sacrifice of a star player can indeed be a cleansing thing. it can mean more, in the end, than the departed player’s 20 wins or 100 rbis. for wins and rbis can be replaced on the roster fairly easily — a lot more so than emotional balance and competitive drive.

for the record, andujar had a much better year in 1986 than heath — 12-7 in 26 starts, an acceptable 3.82 era. heath meanwhile assumed not only andujar’s roster spot but also his role as the embodiment of the cardinals’ disgrace; after a slow start he found himself in herzog’s doghouse, never to emerge. on august 10 he got dealt to detroit for a pitching prospect in the low minor leagues. guy named ken hill.

centi grades

2005-01-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

the cards are coming off their first 100-win season in 20 years, and only their third since world war 2. let me repeat that: in the last 60 years, the cards have topped 100 wins only three times.

just for the sake of comparison, the atlanta braves only have to go back to 1999 to count their last three 100-win seasons, and they’ve done it six times since 1993. but then, before 1993 the franchise had gone ninety-five years—back to 1898—without a single 100-win campaign. the oakland a’s have won 100 twice in the 21st century and four times in the last 16 seasons — but prior to that they’d accomplished the feat just once in more than half a century. the baltimore orioles did it five times in a span of 12 seasons (1969-80), but never before or since. the proud and successful los angeles dodgers haven’t had a 100-win campaign since 1974; the boston red sox since 1946. the pittsburgh pirates have won three world titles and made 10 postseason appearances since 1960 without once winning in triple digits; they last did so in 1909, on a team captained by honus wagner.

suffice it to say that 100-win teams are special. i’ve been looking at them as a group to see what they tell us about the cardinals’ prospects for 2005 and beyond.

first, a look at the cards’ last two 100-game winners, the 1985 and 1967 editions. both teams remained relatively intact for the following season; the ’67 cards returned all 8 position starters and all five starting pitchers, and they won 97 games in ’68 and another pennant. the ’85 team made offseason changes at catcher (mike heath replacing darrell porter) and in the rotation (booting wacky jack andujar and kurt kepshire), not a major facelift — but a rash of injuries and a demoralizing april sweep at the hands of the rival new york mets ruined the season, and the ’86 cards slid to 79 wins, finishing 29 games out of first place.

that 79-win performance is the worst follow-up season for any 100-win team since the divisional era began in 1969. over that span of 36 seasons there have been 41 100-win teams in the major leagues, and only two — the ’85 cards and ’70 cincinnati reds — won as few as 79 games the next year. the ’93 giants would likely have joined that group had the ’94 season been played all the way through; at the time of the strike they were 55-60.

at the other end of the range, the 1969 baltimore orioles followed their 109-win season with 108 wins in 1970 — one of 12 teams to follow one 100-win season with a second. here’s the complete "bell curve" of post-100-win performance, with win totals from strike-shortened seasons (e.g., the ’94 giants) extrapolated to 162 games:

total teams: 41
12 won 100+ games the next year
9 won 95-99 games
8 won 90-94 games
9 won 81-90 games
3 won fewer than 81 games
24 made the playoffs

so roughly 70 percent of all 100-win teams (29 of 41) win at least 90 the next year, and roughly 60 percent go to the playoffs. if we only look at the three-division era, with its watered-down playoff threshold, the numbers are more encouraging: 15 of 16 100-win teams won at least 90 games the following year, and 13 appeared in the playoffs. two franchises — the atlanta braves and new york yankees — account for 9 of the 16 100-win seasons since ’95, but if we eliminate them the ratios don’t change appreciably; of the remaining seven teams, six won 90+ games. however, three of the seven teams (43 percent) missed the playoffs.

those three teams — the 1999 arizona dbacks, 2001 seattle mariners, and 2003 sf giants — share a couple of int'sting traits that the 04 cardinals also possessed. first of all, two of the three posted enormous gains over their previous-year win totals — the 99 dbacks improved by 35 games, the 93 mariners by 27. the 04 cardinals, likewise, were 20 games better than the year before. this is significant — since 1969 only five 100-win teams were higher than +20 over the previous year, and four of them missed the playoffs the following year. their average win total in the post-100-win season was 87. . . . . on the other hand, five teams were either +17 or +18, and four of the five made the playoffs (the lone exception being the ’85 cards). all four of those who did return won 97 games or better. the cards, at +20, sit right on the cusp of these two clusters.

second, two of the three teams significantly outpaced their pythagorean w-l projections (for the uninitiated, the pythagorean w-l is based on the ratio of runs scored to runs allowed). both the the 03 giants and 01 mariners were 7 games ahead of their pythagorean projections; the cardinals beat pythagorus by 5 games. this too is meaningful: since ’69, 100-game winners who beat the pythagorean w-l by 5 games or more decline by an average of 12.2 games the following season; teams that are within four games of pythagorus decline by only 7.6 games the next year. year-after win totals for these categories average 92 and 95, respectively.

side note: the 2004 yankees outpaced their pythagorean projection by a whopping 12 games, suggesting they are primed for a serious fall. but the add’n of randy johnson may counteract that . . . . one more example of why one can’t use a $250 million team as a basis for comparison.

coming next: what the 2004 cardinals can learn from the 1988 oakland athletics.

if you're just joining us . . . .

2005-01-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

. . . .here’s a quick review of what we’ve learned so far this offseason:

the cardinals made a historic addition to their rotation in mark mulder: he’s the franchise’s winningest offseason mound acquisition in over half a century.

bruce sutter is no hall-of-fame pitcher, although we admit he threw one hell of a single-fingered screwball.

the new st louis 2b apparently has never been seen in the same room with fernando vina, and the new shortstop’s lack of range isn’t necessarily a crippling liability. we also learned that the cardinals’ succession of long-tenured shortstops makes it one of the most stable positions in all of baseball.

yadier molina is the youngest everyday catcher for a defending league champ since before 1960; the cardinals, however, have an excellent track record with very young catchers.

of late we discovered that the cardinals are likely the first team in mlb history to open a season with five reigning 15+-game-winners in the rotation; also the first pennant winner in at least 30 years to open their title defense with new starters at both ss and 2b.

finally, we learned to our chagrin that runaway division champs tend to miss the playoffs the following year unless they are the new york yankees or the atlanta braves.

as the keystone krumbles

2005-01-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

another unusual thing about the ’05 cardinals: they are the first team in memory that will attempt to defend a pennant with an all-new keystone combination.

every pennant winner since 1960 has returned either its 2b or its ss. that surprises me, particularly given the annual free-agent scramble of the last 15 yrs or so. it’s no longer uncommon for a pennant winner to turn over half its starting lineup between the world series and next year’s opening day. but ev’yone, it seems, wants an anchor in the middle of the diamond.

that the cardinals won’t have one is not intrinsically significant; a lot of teams hung onto both keystone players but stunk the following year anyway. that includes the last three cardinal pennant winners (82, 85, 87), who returned smith and herr to their posts all three times yet never broke .500 in defending a pennant. but the fact remains that in replacing both 2b and ss, they are doing something no pennant winner of the last 45 years has seen fit to attempt.

the ones who came closest were the 2000 braves and the 1991 athletics. both clubs let their 2b go in the offseason (bret boone and willie randolph, respectively) and, though retaining their ss — walt weiss in both cases, interestingly enough — replaced him early in the next season. weiss opened 1991 in his accustomed place for the a’s, but an injury limited him to only 40 games and 133 at-bats; mike bordick took over in the interim. with the braves, weiss was only nominally a "starting" shortstop in 1999 — he appeared in 102 games but yielded extensive playing time to ozzie guillen and jose hernandez. he returned in ’00 strictly as a bench player, rafael furcal having claimed the job in spring training.

the '90-'91 a’s and '99-'00 braves are both interesting models for '04-'05 cards. first, both teams won pennants with 103 wins (about the same number as the cards last year), then got swept in the world series. both (again, like the cards) got career years out of key players — the braves from chipper jones, kevin millwood, and john rocker, the a’s from scott sanderson, bob welch, rickey henderson (new highs in avg, hr, obp, slg, and tb), and dave stewart (career bests in wins, era, and whip). both had significant offseason turnover — the a’s lost starters at 3b (carney lansford), 2b (willie randolph), and rf (felix jose/willie mcgee), the braves at lf (gerald williams), 2b (bret boone), and 1b (ryan klesko). both had established themselves as perennial playoff contenders; and the a’s, of course, were a la russa-managed club.

the a’s suffered a 19-game decline in 1991 and missed the playoffs. dave stewart won half as many games and saw his era nearly double; bob welch’s win total dropped from 27 to 12, and his era went up by more than a run. the braves though didn’t miss a beat; they slipped back to 95 wins (mainly because of injuries to john smoltz and quilvio veras) but still won their division for the 9th consecutive time.

where will the cards fall? somewhere between the two, methinks, at +/- 92 wins.

four play

2005-01-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

st louis will open the season with five reigning 15-game winners in its rotation. . . . well technically not, with morris likely on the shelf until may or later, but just go with it. how rare is such a quniella, and how have such rotations fared?

here’s the answer: it’s unprecedented. i traced it back — as always, through the generous offices of baseball-reference.com — to 1969, the dim pre-dawn (give or take) of the five-man rotation, and i could find nary a comparable instance. i didn’t look at every team every year, just the likely candidates, so it’s possible i missed an instance or two. but it’s pretty clear that if stl’s 2005 staff is not the first five-man rotation of reigning 15-game winners in mlb history, it’s one of the very few.

so nothing to be learned there --- okay, diff’t tack. the 2004 cards became just the 10th team since 1970 to have four 15-game winners in its rotation. how did the previous nine teams fare the year after this rare achievement? here are the nine teams, with their respective mound quartets and win totals:

2003 nyy: pettite (21), clemens (17), mussina (17), wells (15)
2001 sea: moyer (20), garcia (18), abbott (17), sele (15)
1998 atl: glavine (20), maddux (18), millwood (17), smoltz (17), neagle (16)
1993 atl: glavine (22), maddux (20), avery (18), smoltz (15)
1989 oak: stewart (21), storm davis (19), mike moore (19), welch (17)
1986 nym: ojeda (18), gooden (17), fernandez (16), darling (15)
1980 bal: stone (25), mcgregor (20), palmer (16), flanagan (16)
1978 la: hooten (18), john (17), rau (15), sutton (15)
1971 bal: mcnally (21), cuellar (20), palmer (20), dobson (20)

these nine teams won an average of 103 games, with only two (the ’78 dodgers and ’89 a’s) winning fewer than 100. in the year after, they won an average of 94, with only three topping 100 wins. (interestingly, three of the year-after teams played strike-shortened seasons, so i had to extrapolate their win totals out to 162 games.) just four of the nine teams made it back to the playoffs; two won pennants.

94 wins strikes me as a realistic target for the ’05 cardinals — would likely get them back to the playoffs in a weakened division.

like icarus ascending . . . .

2005-01-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

the cardinals won the nl central by 13 games last year. historically, how have teams who won by such healthy margins performed the following year?

since the six-division era began in 1995, 14 teams have won their division by 13 games or more. nine of them repeated as division champs the following year. the other five — including the 2002 cardinals — missed the next season’s playoffs entirely.

all nine of those who did repeat lost ground in the standings, an average of 11 games; if we include the non-repeaters, the average loss in the gb column is 15 games. the fourteen teams won an average of 8.5 fewer games the following year — one team actually increased its win total, another held serve, and the remaining 12 won fewer games.

no earth-shattering revelations here. the survey merely confirms what we already knew: the cards are not going to win 105 games in 2005, they’ll have to battle to repeat as division champs, and there’s a very real chance they might lose the battle.

but suppose we remove the new york yankees from this survey, and look only at teams that must operate within roughly the same budget constraints as their division rivals? that leaves us with twelve runaway division winners, of whom seven repeated. . . . and if we eliminate the cleveland indians, who for half a decade had absolutely no competition in the al central, and look only at budget-constrained division champs who play in competitive divisions — ie, teams like the cardinals — we are left with nine runaway winners and five repeaters. three of those instances are accounted for by the atlanta braves, a rich team in a weak division. remove THAT advantaged franchise from the equation and the outlook is downright gloomy: six runaway winners and only two repeat champs, the 1998-99 houston astros and the 2002-03 minnesota twins.

essentially there are two types of runaway champs, one — cleveland, ny, and atl — whose domination reflects real advantages (bigger budget, better players) over the division, and another — everybody else — whose robust margin results from one-year advantages that don't carry over into the next season. what "one-year advantages" do i mean? oh, like a lucky convergence of career years, an absence of injuries, a glut of injuries on division rivals' rosters . . . . the kind of advantages the cardinals enjoyed last year.

that should give serious pause to st louisans hoping for another season of glory. recent history has not been kind to teams like the 2005 cardinals.

REPEATERS
2002 min: won by 13.5 games, repeated by 4
2002 atl: won by 19 games, repeated by 9
2001 yanks: won by 13.5 games, repeated by 10
1998 atl: won by 18 games, repeated by 11.5
1998 hou: won by 12.5 games, repeated by 1
1998 yanks: won by 22 games, repeated by 4
1996 cle: won by 14.5 games, repeated by 6
1995 cle: won by 30 games, repeated by 14.5
1995 atl: won by 21 games, repeated by 8

NONREPEATERS
2003 sf: won by 15, finished 2d by 2.5
2002 stl: won by 13, finished 3d by 3
2001 sea: won by 14, finished 3d by 9
1999 cle: won by 21.5, finished 2d by 5
1999 ari: won by 14, finished 3d by 12

yadier's burden

2005-01-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

before we leave the subject of yadier molina and cardinal catcherdom (see jan 16 and jan 17 posts):

molina inherits a 25-year tradition of excellent glovework behind the plate in st louis. at least, so say a couple of sabr studies that examine catchers' glovework. according to this one, authored by jim weigland and online at retrosheet, mike matheney is the 6th-best backstop to don the mask since 1969 --- bested only by bench, pudge rod, munson, benito, and steve yeager. the same list puts three other cardinal catchers in the era’s top 25: tony pena (the era’s 15th best catcher), tom pagnozzi (22d), and darrell porter (24th). if we take weigland at his word, it means the cards have fielded one of the era’s premier catchers virtually every year since 1981.

the other study, by chuck rosciam and also online at retrosheet, uses the same data but only looks at catchers since 1991. this one credits the cards with having two of the era's 10 best defensive catchers — pagnozzi and marrero. the list only rates matheney 17th, which is preposterously low in my opinion — also and hard to reconcile with weigand’s study, which lists matheney 6th over a longer time period, among a much larger pool of catchers. . . .

. . . . well, you know, it’s just stats-turbation.

Feets Don't Fail Me

2005-01-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

the latest on pujols’ hurtin’ heel from mlb.com and the post-dispatch. google turns up a homemade website about the injury, which docs call plantar fasciitis and the rest of us know as heel spurs.

now albert has something in common with joe dimaggio besides incredible stat lines. dimaggio also suffered from heel spurs, was crippled by them toward the end of his career. read about it in hemingway’s "the old man and the sea" or halberstam’s "summer of ’49."

per halberstam’s book, by the spring of 1949 dimaggio could barely walk, so painful was his condition. he sat out the entire first half of that year before his feet got fit, returned in time to swat 14 hr and knock in 67 runs as the yankees squeaked past the red sox by a game. it was casey stengel’s first season as yankee skipper — and the first of five consecutive world championships for the yanks.

This Just In: Bob and Rays

2005-01-17T14:21:00.000-07:00

bob alomar lost to the mighty tampa bay devil rays, despite hard sell by la russa . . . . . if that's where the boy'd rather play, i must've been wrong about him all along.

but i still think the cards need a table setter. barry larkin's still out there --- .352 obp last year, .371 lifetime. . . .

youth catches on

2005-01-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

yadier molina is the cardinals’ youngest starting catcher (see yesterday's post) since ted simmons, who was only 21 when he became the fulltime regular in 1971. simba had split the job with joe torre in 1970 and struggled — 15 passed balls in just 79 games, batting average only.243. but bing devine and red schoendienst deemed him fit for the part anyway, and he rewarded their faith with an excellent 1971: a .304 average with 77 rbis. he also called bob gibson’s no-hitter and handled a pitching staff that featured two hall-of-famers (hoot and steve carlton). but the cards’ staff era ranked just 11th out of 12 nl teams, nullifying the work of an excellent offense that ranked 2d in runs scored. such would be the pattern throughout simmons’ long sojourn at the position — he caught only one staff that placed higher than 6th in era (1973: 3.25, 2d place).

the catcher simmons inherited the job from, tim mccarver, also became a starter at age 21. he made his debut in 1959 at just 17 years of age and logged 100 major-league at-bats before he turned 20. in 1963 he replaced the productive platoon of gene oliver and carl sawatski and did himself credit, batting .289 with 4 hr and 51 rbi. but as a handler of pitchers, mccarver did not perform as well as the lore would suggest. in the three seasons before he began calling the signals (1960-62), st louis ranked 4th, 1st, and 2d in league era. in mccarver’s first three years — with roughly the same arms — st louis ranked only 7th, 6th, and 6th. they won a world title anyway in mccarver's 2nd year, but it was in spite (not because) of their pitching staff, which regressed after mccarver took over. even bob gibson went temporarily stagnant: his era, hits per inning, and strikeouts per inning were all worse with mccarver in 1963-64 than they had been with oliver/sawatski in 1962. not until the cardinals moved into spacious busch stadium in 1966 would the st louis pitching staff reclaim its spot in the top half of the league in era.

of more recent vintage, 24-year-old tom nieto caught 95 games for the 1985 cardinals and handled the staff just fine, thank you: st louis finished second in the league with a 3.10 era. the following year, 25-year-old pudge lavalliere caught 108 games and the card staff finished fourth at 3.37. but the 1998 staff threw half its games to 24-year-old eli marrero and labored to a 4.32 era, 8th in the 16-team league.

in the 42 seasons since mccarver took the job in 1963, only 11 featured a starting cardinal catcher aged 24 or younger. they won pennants in two of those years, with one world title.

None Younger than Yadier

2005-01-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

technically he’s no longer a rookie — hell, he’s even started a world series game — but yadier molina is still only 22 years old. that’s young for a catcher — extreeemely so on a team that’s trying to defend a pennant. the last reigning league champ that opened the season with a 22-year-old everyday catcher was . . . . well, i searched back to 1960 on baseball-reference.com and couldn’t find a single example.

i did find one pennant-defender that put a 22-year-old behind the plate at midseason — the 1999 san diego padres, who stuck ben davis back there for 74 games. the highly touted davis, picked second overall in the 1995 amateur draft, arrived after just half a season at triple a. he hit .244 with 5 hr and 30 rbi for the padres in 1999 — not terrible stats for half a rookie season — but in the years since he has never developed. now 28, davis owns a career batting avg of just .237. he is currently the property of the chicago white sox, for whom he hit .231 last season with 6 homers.

but since davis did not open the season as his team’s ev’yday catcher, he's a lousy example. lousier still in light of the fact that by the time davis got the job, the padres were no longer really "defending" their pennant. they had been decimated by free-agency in the offseason, losing ken caminiti, steve finley, greg vaughan, kevin brown, and joey hamilton off their championship squad. then, in spring training, incumbent catcher carlos hernandez went down with a season-ending injury, forcing the pads to break camp with a backstop platoon of greg myers and jim leyritz, with phil nevin and wiki gonzalez (the only "wiki" in mlb history) available for light duty. ben davis opened the season at las vegas, stayed there until mid-june, and didn’t crack the starting lineup until june 24, by which time san diego had already nosedived into last place, 8 games under .500 and 9 behind the division-pacing dbacks. so davis was never expected (as yadier will be) to start for a contending club; he was part of a rebuilding effort, and thus not a candidate for comparison.

so, discarding that instance, we track back all the way to 1962, when the cincinnati reds opened their defense of the ’61 pennant with 23-year-old johnny edwards behind the plate. like molina, edwards came into the job after a lengthy audition for a championship team; in 145 at bats (10 more than yadier got last year) for the '61 reds he batted .186, with 2 hr and 14 rbi. and, like molina, edwards had quite a reputation as a gloveman — indeed, went on to win gold gloves in his second and third seasons (’63 and ’64).

he was not gold-glove caliber in ’62, tho not terrible either — 12 errors and 16 passed balls in 130 games. but he seemed to handle the pitching staff well enough; the reds’ era hardly changed, from 3.78 in ’61 (3rd in the league) to 3.75 in 1962 (5th), and their outstanding rotation trio (jim o’toole, joey jay, and bob purkey) sustained its success. and edwards batted .254 with 8 hr and 50 rbi, a major improvement over the five-man corporation that mucked up the position in ’61 (the group hit .209 w 4 hr and 36 rbi).

edwards helped the reds mount an admirable title defense — they finished with 98 wins, good for third place (four games behind the giants).

From Raschi With Love

2005-01-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

hardball times has a short but worthwhile article on long-ago yankee great Vic Raschi, who per my dec 21 post is the standard against whom we shall judge mark mulder.

Range no Factor?

2005-01-09T03:48:00.000-07:00

houston reaction to the beltran defection, part one and part two. astros' bleak outlook at mlb.com.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

worried about david eckstein’s lack of range at ss? maybe you shouldn’t be. of the last 20 pennant winners (10 in each league going back to 1995), only six had shortstops with a better-than-average range factor.

that list does not include the 2004 st louis cardinals, by the way: edgar slid just below par last season, at 4.41 plays per 9 innings (pp9) versus a league average of 4.45. his al counterpart, orlando cabrera, was even more laggardly, with 4.16 pp9 vs a league average of 4.56.

you have to go all the way back to 1998 to find a pennant-winner whose ss beat the league average in range factor: the san diego padres. the shortstop? chris gomez. you have to go a year further back to find same in the american league: the 1997 cleveland indians and omar vizquel. in the interim, such nondescript glovemen as rich aurilia, alex gonzalez, mike bordick, and (yes) david eckstein have anchored world-series-worthy infields.

eckstein has never bested the league average in range factor; he made his best showing in 2003, coming within 0.10 pp9 of par. but he was truly awful last season, falling shy of the a.l. average by 0.73 pp9 — nearly a play a game. over his career, though, eck’s deficit in range factor — 0.33 pp9 below league average — is consistent with the performance of most pennant-winning shortstops of the last decade.

does that mean card fans can stop fretting about the loss of range in the middle infield? . . . . . . . not so fast. the caveat is that many of the range-challenged shortstops we’ve been discussing played behind strikeout-oriented power pitchers who could succeed in the absence of tight infield defense. the ’04 boxos had schilling and pedro; the ’01 dbacks, schilling and big unit. the giants? jason schmidt. the marlins? josh beckett in ’03, livan hernandez in ’97. the yanks have had clemens, mussina, el duque, dave cone, et al over the years.

the cardinals’ staff does not fit this profile; our guys put the ball over the plate and rely on their defense. eckstein is not going to have their backs like edgar did — and the diff’nce is going to show up on the scoreboard and in the staff’s eras. a reasonable guess is that over the course of a season eckstein might cost the cardinals between 35 and 100 base hits — ie, fail to reach 35-100 balls that edgar would have gloved.

in a season comprising about 5,000 plate appearances by the opposing team, can the fate of 50 ground balls really make a difference? we may learn the answer in 2005.

SS FOR PENNANT WINNERS, 1995-2004

NL: renteria (04 cards), alex gonzalez (03 marlins), rich aurilia (02 giants), womack (01 dbacks), mike bordick / rey ordonez (00 mets), walt weiss the elder (99 braves), gomez (98 padres), renteria the younger (97 marlins), jeff blauser (95-96 braves).

AL: cabrera (04 boxos), jeter (03 nyy), eckstein (02 angels), jeter (98-01 nyy), vizquel (97 indians), jeter (96 nyy), vizquel (95 indians).

Grudzing Acceptance

2005-01-06T23:05:00.000-07:00

mark grudzielanek: the second, slightly younger and slightly cheaper coming of fernando vina. per 600 at-bats, they are the same player. look:

vina: 88 r, 169 h, 40 xbh, 48 bi, 41 bb, .282 ba, .348 obp, .379 slg
grud: 81 r, 173 h, 43 xbh, 52 bi, 32 bb, .287 ba, .330 obp, .389 slg

not a whole lot to choose from. vina gets on base about 15 more times a year; grudz has a shade more pop, but the diff'nces are so small they're not worth discussing.

what is worth discussing is that grudz is a year younger and about two million bucks cheaper than fernando; also that he's coming off two straight good years, in each of which he bested his career marks in batting avg, obp, and slugging. of course, hitting in the friendly confines had something to do with that. . . . also, players in their mid-30s don't usually escape their career orbit and zoom off on some new trajectory. grudz'anek could well come crashing back to earth, as vina did in 2003 after a string of above-avg seasons.

grudzielanek won't win any gold gloves (vina won two for the cards), but his errors and range factors have gen'lly been above the league avg.

i'd have preferred roberto alomar, who in his three worst seasons (2002-04) has been nearly as productive as grudz'anek at his best. again, per 600 ab:

alomar 78 r, 147 h, 40 xbh, 54 bi, 61 bb, .263 ba, .331 obp, .368 slg
grudzk 81 r, 173 h, 43 xbh, 52 bi, 32 bb, .287 ba, .330 obp, .389 slg

even at his diminished capacity, alomar's roughly even with grudz'k --- and with just a minor return to form he becomes a significantly better offensive player.

one last comparison: placido polanco, who at 29 is still in his prime and has been consistently good for the last five years. per 600:

polanc 88 r, 177 h, 42 xbh, 59 bi, 34 bb, .295 ba, .339 obp, .410 slg
grudzk 81 r, 173 h, 43 xbh, 52 bi, 32 bb, .287 ba, .330 obp, .389 slg

polanco's slightly better, but not that much ---- certainly not $4 million worth, which is how much he'll out-earn grudz'k by this season.

the data leave me no choice but to revoke my knee-jerk objections to this signing. the cardinals got another good deal ---- decent player, low price. but i have to keep asking: what good are all these "value" signings if the cards don't put the savings back into the roster? they're now spending less than they did last year at catcher, shortstop, and (now that tino's contract has expired) 1st base; and they're at least $10 million cheaper in the rotation. what's walter waiting for? and with his lineup pretty much set, what would he spend the money on anyway?

i'm thinking (hoping) he stuffs the cash in his pocket until july 1 and goes after another ace for the rotation . . . .

The Grudz, the Bad, the Ugly

2005-01-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

i disapprove. here's the best way i can sum up the diff'nce between mark grudzielanek and bob alomar:

alomar's career obp is .371; grudzielanek has only had one season with an obp better than .371 , five years ago (.376).

grudzielanek's career obp is .330; alomar has only had one season with an obp worse than .330. granted, it was last year (.321). . . . but i'd rather take my chances w/ the future famer than a journeyman.

here's what the post dispatch had to say

ChiC: Beltran or Bust

2005-01-06T08:29:00.000-07:00

should the cubs fail (please god) in their last-ditch effort to sign carlos beltran, what options do they have left to plug their gaping hole in lf?

1. magglio ordonez: missed 1/2 of '04 with injury but only 31 and can hit; career .307 batting avg, .525 slg
2. jeromy burnitz: turns 36 in april; whacked 37 altitude-aided dingers in colorado last yr, with 110 rbis, and has hit 30+ hr six of the last seven yrs.

after whom, there follows a steep dropoff in the outfield free-agent pool:

3. ruben sierra: 39 yrs old ---- hit 17 hr in 300 ab last year for the yanks to nudge his career total past 300
4. danny bautista: .286 with 11 hr and 65 rbi for arizona last yr
5. gabe kapler: not to be confused with gabe kaplan of "welcome back kotter" fame
6. brian jordan: 38 yrs old and washed up --- .222 last yr in part-time duty.
7. juan gonzalez: snicker
8. doug glanville: guffaw
8. raul mondesi: howl
9. ray lankford: stop . . . please, stop . . . you're killing me
10. ellis burks
11. gary "sarge" matthews
12. billy williams

Mysteries of the Single-Finger Screwball

2005-01-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

bruce sutter running out of time to reach the hall of fame; unsuccessful again yesterday in what by now must be his 10th or 11th attempt, which would leave him only four or five more shots.

he does not merit inclusion, imho, even though he made a revolutionary contribution to the game. sutter was the first guy to perfect the now-ubiquitous split-finger fastball. there was no such thing before he came along; there was the forkball, a similar pitch, but hardly anybody threw it (diego segui for one, i recall). the split-finger was a great mystery at the time — nobody could figure out the physics of the thing, or explain why it dropped so sharply just as it reached the plate. it was as if sutter were practicing a form of sorcery, employing a power no one else understood, much less possessed. i remember watching a segment on nbc’s "game of the week" pregame show in which ex-dodger relief pitcher mike marshall stood next to sutter during a bullpen session and tried to figure out how he cast such a spell on the baseball. marshall (whose career stats are comparable to sutter’s, by the way) scrutinized his subject the way old-time anthropologists used to study contortionists or tribal medicine men; nbc shot some super-slow-motion video of the session, and marshall pored over that too. he concluded that sutter was throwing not a split-finger fastball but rather (as he called it) a single-finger screwball. the super-slo-mo revealed all: as the ball left sutter’s hand his index finger fell completely away, and the ball rolled off his middle finger in a tight clockwise twirl, so that it broke toward right-handed hitters and away from lefties — the opposite of the typical break from a right-handed pitcher.

hence the mystery — batters had never seen anything like it from an rhp before. (a similar sense of awe and disbelief apparently attended carl hubbell’s invention of the classic screwball in the 1930s.) sutter had stumbled upon a gimmick pitch — and once hitters figured it out, the jig was up. in his first three seasons as closer (1977-79), he struck out 1.12 men per inning — hitters could barely lay bat on ball. but in his next six seasons (1980-85), until injury basically ended his career, sutter whiffed guys at about half the rate — 0.66 per inning. his eras, hits-per-innings, and save-conversion rates weakened accordingly. though sutter remained a very effective pitcher, he was no longer a dominant one after those 1st three years — ergo no hall-of-famer.

sutter and marshall's career lines, side by side:
sutt: 68-71, 2.84 era, 300 sv, 661 g, 1040 ip, 861 so
marsh: 97-112, 3.14 era, 188 sv, 723 g, 1386 ip, 880 so

sutter led the lg in saves 5 times, marshall 3.
both pitched in one world series.
both won 1 cy young award (marsh 74, sutt 79).
marshall finished 5th in mvp race 1973, 3d in 1974.
sutter finished 5tth in 1982 mvp race.

Long Stop Shortstops: Update

2005-01-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

re cards long-running stabilty at ss (see jan'y 2d post): a very cursory survey of www.baseball-reference.com turned up sev’l equivalent or longer runs of rock-solidness, viz.:

1. dodgers, 1946-73 — 28 years, four cfs: carl furillo (46-48), duke snider (1949-58), don demeter (1959-60), and willie davis (61-73). at which point an upheaval ensued at the position, with six dodger cfs in 7 yrs, until kenny landreaux restored order from 1981-85.

2. yankees, 1959-88 — 30 yrs, four 2bs: bobby richardson (59-66), horace clarke (67-73), sandy alomar (74-75), and willie randolph (76-88). the position went aroil in the mid-1990s, with successive one-yr stints by pat kelly, luis sojo, mariano duncan; chuck knoblauch seemed to have it back under control until his throwing arm went daffy. position now wobbly again — stopgap service last year by miguel cairo, tony womack now in residence.

3. yankees, 1949-79 — 31 yrs, four cs: yogi (1949-59), elston howard (60-66), jake gibbs (67-69), and thurman munson (70-79). rock steady.

4. orioles, 1963-2002 — 40 yrs, four ss: contrary to my statement two days ago, ripken’s orioles in fact were more stable at ss than the smith-renteria cardinals. the run goes like this: five yrs of luis aparicio (63-67), fourteen of mark belanger (68-81), fifteen of cal ripken (82-96), and six of mike bordick (97-02). imagine: certain o’s fans matured all the way from college to social security, from skinny bach’lorhood to wheezing geezerdom, and never once had to worry about the home team’s shortstop woes. . . . . well, almost. this clean line of succession is marred, alas, by the garcia/sakata interregnum: after 1978 belanger remained the "regular" in name only, a dying monarch increasingly at the mercy of his conniving heirs. during those years he ceded a share of his title first to kiko garcia and then to len sakata — with wayne krencheki and bobby bonner sopping up a few starts each for good measure. sakata finally wrested the throne in ’82 but held it for barely half a season; earl weaver shifted ripken from third base to short in july, and the sport’s longest rein thereby commenced.

so the cards' run of 4 ss in 28 years is impressive but not historic. it is, however, the longest-running CURRENT streak of this type that i have yet found. . . . and i ain't a-looking for any others.

sorry, all you wheezing geezers.

Transplant x 2

2005-01-03T06:01:00.000-07:00

sidebar to prev post:

the cards this offseason are replacing both halves of their keystone combination for the first time since the winter of 98-99, when they shed royce clayton and delino deshields for renteria and a revolving door (polanco mcewing and adam kennedy). 2b remained essentially vacant until f vina’s arrival in 2000, giving stl their best, and longest-running, pairing since smith-herr.

Long Stops at Shortstop

2005-01-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

david eckstein becomes just the 5th cardinal shortstop of the post-don kessinger era.

since kessinger's brief rein at the position in 1976, the cards have had only four everyday shortstops: garry templeton (1977-81), ozzie smith (1982-95), royce clayton (1996-98), and edgar renteria (1999-2004). four shortstops in 28 years --- pretty stable position.

for comparison’s sake, the cards have had 10 reg’lar 2bs in the same period — see below if you care who they are — along with 13 reg’lar 1bs and 9 3bs and catchers. they have used so many rightfielders (14) that the fragile jd drew holds the second-longest tenure out there over the period in question.

the only position remotely as stable as ss in stlouis has been centerfield, which for the last 20 years has essentially been the province of three guys — mcgee, lankford, and edmonds — with a one-yr cameo by jd drew in 1999. jerry mumphrey and tony scott preceded willie at the position, making it six cfs post-kessinger.

why use the "kessinger era" as a benchmark? because don kessinger was the last in a long string of failures at what was then a woefully unstable position. the search for dal maxvill’s replacment at shortstop began after maxie hit .175 in 1969 and dragged on for six awful seasons. the bodies strewn by the side of the road included eddie crosby, dwain anderson, mick kelleher, mario guerrero, ray busse, eddie brinkman, and the immortal mike tyson. kessinger, the cubs’ longtime ss, took over in 1976 and kept the position warm for 113 games — until templeton was ready for the callup from tulsa.

since then, the cards have been even more stable at ss than the orioles, despite the presence in baltimore of stable-to-the-point-of-rigor-mortis cal ripken. the orioles have used seven reg’lar ss since ’77: mark belanger (1977-78), kiko garcia (1979-81), lenny sakata (1982), ripken (1983-1996), mike bordick (1997-2002), devi cruz (2003), and miguel tejada (2004).

it’s a fair question: over the past generation has any position in baseball, on any team, been as stable as the cards’ ss position? will be sure to advise if i find an example . . . . .

cardinal reg’lars since 1977:

1b: hernandez77-82, hendrick83, dgreen84, clark85-87, horner88, guerrero89-91, galaragga92, jefferies 93-94, mabry95-96, dyoung97, mcgwire98-01, martinez02-03, pujols04 — 13 guys, longest hernandez 6 yr

2b: tyson 77-78, oberkfell 79-80, herr81-87, alicea88, oquendo 89-91, alicea 92-93, pena94, oquendo95, alicea96, deshields97-98, mcewing99, vina00-03, womack04 — 10 guys, longest herr 7 yr

3b: reitz77-80, oberkfell81-83, pendleton84-90, zeile91-94, cooper95, gaetti96-98, tatis99-00, polanco01-02, rolen03 — 9 guys, longest pend’ton 7 yr

lf: brock 77, jemorales78, ldurham 80, lezcano 81, losmith 82-84, coleman 85-90, mithompson 91, gilkey92-95, gant96-98, lankford99-01, pujols02-03 — 11 guys, longest coleman 6 yr

cf: mumphrey77-78, scott79-81, mcgee82-90, lankford91-98, drew99, edmonds00-04 — six guys, longest mcgee 9 yr

rf: hcruz77, hendrick78-82, dgreen83, hendrick84, vslyke85-86, cford87, brunansky88-89, mthompson90, fjose91-92, whiten93-94, jordan95-96, mabry97, jordan98, edavis99, drew00-03, sanders04 — 14 guys, longest hendrick 6 yr

c: simmons77, porter81, heath86, pena87, zeile90, pagnozzi91, defelice97, marrero98, matheney00 — 9 guys, longest pagnozzi 6 yr

Oh What the Eck

2004-12-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

new ss signee should be serviceable. basically the same player as womack, at a diff't position. on-base avgs are acceptable, and he appears to make the routine plays in the field. but his range is not even close to edgar's.

also to the good, eckstein comes at a reasonable price --- a better value than either edgar or cabrera. but here's what i want to know: if this guy's worth $3.5 mill a year for three years, why wasn't womack worth $2.5 mill for two?

and here's another $$$ question: this year the cards have shed tino, edgar, woody, matheny, and kline from the payroll and cut morris's salary by $10 mill ---- a seeming windfall, roughly $30 million. but so far all they've done is add mid-priced contracts (mulder eckstein and 1/2 of walker's salary) and absorb a $4 mill spike in suppan's contract . . . . all of which by my estimate totals about $20 mill. whither the rest? and who's still on the market that's worth spending the money on? . . . . i think walt has missed some opportunities.

but perhaps i'm quibbling. to give walt his due, he's plugging the holes well enough to keep the team competitive, and he has avoided biting some dangerous bait this off-season, for which i give him loads of credit.

Big Unit Yet a Card?

2004-12-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

with la-ariz-ny menage a trois collapsed, mebbe randy johnson to stl yet? cards expended their best prospects on mulder, but probably could still cobble together a package using ankiel and marquis as a foundation. i'm not even sure whether or not i favor the latter. but it would not suck to go into the season with this rotation:

johnson
mulder
carpenter
morris
suppan

No Placido to Go

2004-12-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

polanco is going back to philly, leaving cabrera as a likely signee in the middle infield. i hope not; he will not be worth the price. my own opinion is that the cards should bring in a couple of old guys ---- larkin and alomar --- to key the infield, along with pokey reese for spot starts and late-inning defensive help. even in their declining years, both of these old pros still get on base more often than cabrera. either one can lead off, filling the cards' main remaining hole, and both will field their positions reliably if unspectacularly. but best of all they will leave the cards with some payroll flexibility when the midseason fire-sale commences.

Mulder: Best Mound Add'n Since '54

2004-12-21T16:37:00.000-07:00

near as i can tell, mark mulder is the best starting pitcher the cards have acquired in the last 50 offseasons — on paper, anyway. see data at end of post.

his won-loss record alone — 17-8 last year, 51-24 over the last three years — makes him a rare pickup. the last time the cards added a 17-game winner to their rotation was 1972, when they acquired rick wise from the phillies . . . . for a guy named carlton. wise had gone 17-14 in 1971 pitching for the god-awful phillies and distinguished himself by throwing a no-hitter and hitting two dingers in the game for good measure. in the three seasons before he joined the cards wise went 45-41 — not bad when you consider the phillies were an aggregate 79 games under .500 during that span. and he won 32 games in his two years in st louis, making the all-star team one year. so he worked out pretty well. but carlton . . . . . well, you know.

aside from mulder and wise, the cards haven’t added a 17-game winner to their rotation since before 1950.

they have, however, made some splashy pickups, including darryl kile, andy benes, pat hentgen, todd stottlemyre, john tudor, lary sorenson, bryn smith, and chuck finley. most of these guys were very productive in cardinal red, but none came equipped with anything near mulderesque credentials.

benes came to st louis in 1996 burdened with a 76-77 career mark and an aggregate of just 32 wins (against 38 losses) over the three previous years; he went 52-37 for the cards in two tours of duty and helped the team to four division titles. hentgen brought an impressive 105-74 career mark but was already sliding, viz. just 38-33 cumulative in the three years immediately before he joined stl; he went a shaky 15-12 for the cards in 2000 and has won just 11 games in the 21st century. kile washed ashore in st louis after two seasons adrift at coors field, which years dragged his career record down to 92-95. but even if we set those two castaway seasons aside, kile brought a a mediocre 71-65 non-coors career mark to busch. as a cardinal he went 41-24.

before mulder, the cards’ best incoming sp of the last 50 yrs was ken hill, who returned to st louis from montreal as a free agent in 1995 after three outstanding seasons — the last of which, a 16-5, 3.32 performance in 1994, was cut short by the strike. entering his second stl stint, hill was 41-21 over the three prev years and 64-52 for his career, with a 3.49 era. he proceeded to stink up the joint, going 6-7 with a 5.06 era in 18 starts in 1995. the cards, having seen enough, dealt him to cleveland for david bell.

so that auspicious acquisition didn’t exactly work out. . . . . nor did another hopeful signee of that offseason, danny jackson. he'd gone 14-6 with a 3.27 era in '94; grant him the balance of his starts from that aborted season, and he'd probably have equaled mulder's 17 wins. but djax flopped even worse than ken hill: 2-12 with a 5.90 era.

no recent card offseason acquisition can come close to mulder's three-year won-loss record of 51-24. the most proximate analog is vic raschi, whom the cardinals purchased from the yankees in february 1954 for $85,000. from 1951-53 raschi was 50-22 for the world champs, with a 3.13 era. a four-time all-star and three-time 20-game winner, he brought a gaudy .706 career winning percentage to st louis — 120 wins, 70 losses. he also owned five world series victories, the most in mlb history at the time.

after going 13-6, 3.33 for the world champion yankees in 1953, raschi joined a strong card’nl rotation anchored by harvey haddix, who in 1953 led the nat'l league in shutouts (6), finished third in wins (20) and innings pitched (253), and was fourth in era (3.06) and complete games (19). the cards' returning sps also included gerry staley (18 wins, 5th in the nl), vinegar bend mizell (13 wins and 173 whiffs, third-best in the loop), and al brazle (a league-leading 18 saves). coming off a strong 3d-place finish, st louis hoped raschi would get them back to the world series for the first time since 1946.

but look out: raschi stunk, logging an 8-9 mark with a 4.73 era, and the cards stumbled to 6th place at 72-82. they dumped raschi after one start in 1955 and he caught on with kansas city, going 4-6 with a 5.68 era. so ended his career.

vic raschi's lifetime won-lost percentage of .667 (132-66) remains the 13th-best in mlb history.

stl off-season hires, 1954-2004:

BEST 1-YR RESUME (wins)
Mulder 05: 17-8, 4.43
Wise 72: 17-14, 2.88
Hill 95: 16-5, 3.32
D Jackson 95: 14-6, 3.26
Stot'myre 96: 14-7 4.55
Raschi 54: 13-6, 3.33
Suppan 04: 13-11 4.19
Sorenson 81: 12-10, 3.68
Tudor 85: 12-11, 3.27
Falcone 76: 12-11 4.17
Hermanson 01: 12-14, 4.77

BEST 3-YR RESUME (wins)
Mulder 05: 51-24, 3.72
Raschi 54: 50-22, 3.13
Sorenson 81: 45-36, 3.59
Wise 72: 45-41, 3.39
Hill 95: 41-21, 3.05
Purkey 65: 40-24 3.05
Kile 00: 40-37, 5.12
Tudor 85: 38-33, 3.68
Hentgen 00: 38-34, 4.43

Mulder's Day

2004-12-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

mulder is a very good pitcher at a very good price. trouble is they're gonna be rebuilding this rotation every offseason for the forseeable future, and haren won't cost anything for sev'l years, which made him very useful. plus he's good --- mighta won 12 to 15 games this year, a very high yield on low investment. but mulder might win 20. so the rationale seems sound. they filled a glaring need without breaking the bank or the roster. it may or may not work out, but i think it's an intelligent move.

given mulder's relatively low cost, they ought to have enough left in the till to buy polanco and either alomar or reese for the middle infield. i remain extremely leery of cabrera, who is going to cost a lot more than he's worth and tie up somebody's payroll for sev'l years. cards can't afford another tino.

Bye Edgar

2004-12-17T16:35:00.000-07:00

first of all, would it be so awful it the cards opened the season with a rotation of

carpenter
marquis
haren
suppan
morris

we've seen worse. remember garret stephenson? bret tomko? the immortal bud smith?

that rotation would be competitive but would probably not get the cards back the series. but jock'ty can still find an ace during the season, when the has-been teams start dumping their good players.

that leaves the leadoff spot as the primary issue to address. cabrera does not cut it ---- career obp of .316. polanco is better --- career .339, with the last two years at .352 and .345. then there's bob alomar --- career .371 obp, has held steady the last three years at .333. . . . they could do a lot worse. alomar's 37 years old, will not tie up long-term dollars, and is probably the best value out there.

they could get both alomar and polanco for renteria's dollars, and still have some money left over to add pokey reese as insurance. for that matter, i wouldn't object if they brought in alomar to leadoff and reese to play ss, and dropped a bundle on matt clement for the rotation. that would leave them in a position to assemble a package from suppan / marquis / haren / ankiel for another top-flight pitcher (randy johnson, maybe??).

there are still options out there.

Matchup: Cards Boxos

2004-10-23T06:14:00.000-06:00

world series begins tonight at fenway park, home of unlikely al champion red sox. they have just become the first team in history to rally from a 3-0 series deficit, upsetting the detested yankees in unprecedented fashion. matchup between these two teams is wide open. each led its league in runs scored — the first time that has happened since the great 1975 series between the red sox and the reds.

funny, because i (and many others) have likened this cardinals team to the big red machine: an overpowering lineup that hits, slugs, and runs, plays great defense, has impeccable fundamentals, and above all plays with intelligence. . . . coupled with just enough pitching to make it work. likewise, these red sox resemble the sox of 1975: strong starting pitching, up the middle defense, home-run power at nearly every position, and a heavily involved, multifaceted set of bench players. that team, too, reached the series by knocking off a dynastic opponent — the three-time defending champ oakland a’s.

consider how the game has changed: those ’75 boxos led the league in runs scored yet had only one player with 100+ runs, only two with 100+ rbis, and only two with more than 20 homers — rookies jim rice (22) and fred lynn (21). (rice, it will be recalled, missed the entire world series with an injury.) conversely, boxo pitchers that year tossed 62 complete games — 52 from the trio of el tiante, spaceman lee, and ex-cardinal rick wise. the bullpen "closer" was the forgettable dick drago, credited with 15 "saves."

to the numbers:

the ’xos led the majors with 949 runs scored. they outscored their opponents by 181 runs (vs cards 196) and outhomered them by 63 (vs cards’ 45). they were 4th in their league with 222 homers — eight more than the cards — and first in obp (.360) and slugging (.472). they were only 11th in their league in runs allowed, yielding 768, despite yielding the fewest home runs in the al (159) and allowing the league’s lowest on-base avg and baserunners per inning. to repeat: they gave up the fewest baserunners and the fewest homers, yet gave up the 11th-most runs. that’s because they gave up an ungodly 94 unearned runs, most in the american league, thanks to 118 errors (11th in loop) and only 129 double plays (13th). of course, the dp figure is depressed by the lack of men on base . . . . but it’s still a weak number. another factor in the inflated runs-against total: sox pitchers gave up 123 stolen bases, most in the league.

these figures suggest that the cards need to exploit their speed. the ’xos don’t give up homers and they don’t give up lots of baserunners — ie don’t give up long rallies. but you can get ’em by running and putting pressure on their weak defense. neither boxos playoff opponent to date has had much of a baserunning threat; st louis has womack (lumbars willing) and renteria, plus walker and sanders. these guys are gonna have to get on, and when they do they’re gonna have to run. whiteyball returns!

the cards have now yielded 21 homers in 98 postseason innings — two a game — and their staff now holds the record for hrs allowed in a single nlcs, 14 to houston. these figures stink. but the stl staff is the converse of the ’xos staff, in that despite the horrible hr figure they still keep the opponent off the board. their postseason era of 3.84 is the best among the eight participants, and they have yielded only 43 runs in 11 games — a run a game better than their next closest competitor. they have given up only 78 hits in 98 innings pitched; their oba against is a miserly .305. and the defense has been stellar, saving runs and committing only one error thus far. the home runs are the achilles’ heel — nearly got them beat against houston, and could cost them this series. but thus far the staff has managed to stave off the big inning, keep the team in the game long enough for the cardinal bats to post big innings of their own.

doing the same will be key against boston. the ’xos lineup is patient and powerful, boasting six regulars with obas of .380 or better and six with 18 or more home runs. however, their power is not well distributed — two players (manny ramirez and david ortiz) have 40+ homers, but nobody else has more than 20. they are going to swat some dingers, no doubt about it; the cards’ task is to otherwise keep them off base.

the ’xos have posted an unsightly 5.20 postseason era, but it’s inflated by that 19-run bruise sustained in game 3 against new york. set that to the side, and their pitching stats are comparable to the cards’. they will get four starts out of curt schilling and pedro martinez, with tim wakefield and derek lowe picking up the other three. schilling is wounded and pedro is fading, but they’re both still more dominating than anybody the cardinals will throw out there. they have a very good closer, keith foulke, and altho the bullpen has let them down this postseason it is not terrible. erstwhile starter bronson arroyo bolsters the setup corps, which otherwise features ex-card mike timlin and lefty one-hitter specialists alan embree and mike myers. those two will be asked to handle walker and edmonds from the 6th inning on, i reckon. both men had a spot of trouble with the longball — embree 7 dingers in 52 innings, myers 5 in 42.

it has the makings of a memorable series — both teams with obvious advantages over the other, the right equipment to attack each other’s vulnerabilities. boston has four games at home, a definite advantage; also the stronger starting pitchers. but they play ragged, inconsistent baseball — viz three straight losses followed by four straight wins in alcs. i think their best chance of victory is to blow the series open early, win it in four or five games. a longer series, imho, favors the steadier, sounder, more well-rounded team: the cardinals.

there’s a history there. i call it st louis in seven.

Matchup: Cards Astros

2004-10-13T06:12:00.000-06:00

cards-astros matchup breakdown:

macro indicators strongly favor cards. st louis outscored houstonians 855-803 and outpitched them 659-698; outscored opponents by 196 runs, vs astros’ 105-run differential. cards win era, 3.75 to 4.05; homers hit (214-187) and allowed (169-174); pitchers issued 85 fewer walks and 38 fewer hits; defense made fewer errors (97-101) and turned more dps (154-136). the cards had the highest defensive efficiency rating in the league; houston ranked 14th. cards advantaged in on-base avg, slugging, and batting average. the cards hold every statistical edge in this series; a clean sweep. whereas the cards finished at or near the top of the league in nearly every category, the astros were uniformly middling — between 6th and 9th place in almost every important benchmark, both hitting and pitching. these numbers point unambiguously to a st louis victory.

the caveats go like this:

1. houston has the two most dominant starters in the series, indeed arguably the two most dominant in the national league this year — rogers clemens and roy oswalt.

2. they are the hottest team in baseball, having played almost .800 ball over the final month and a half to storm into the playoffs.

3. they set a scoring record in the first round of the playoffs by scoring 36 runs in five games against atlanta — who, by the way, led the league in era by one point over the cardinals. in their three wins, houston scored 12, 9, and 8 runs. for the series, they outscored atlanta 36-21, and outhomered them 11-7.

4. they won the season series v st louis, 10-8, including 5 wins in 6 september outings. they swept the cards twice — at busch in april, and at enron in september.

the homers are of particular concern to me. though stl pitchers had the lowest first-round staff era (3.09), they yielded 7 homers in four games — mostly solo shots, but still. houston fields five starters with 20-plus dingers, plus a half-time outfielder who rapped 14. their ballpark generates nearly as many homers as coors field. ballpark factor cuts both ways — st louis hits ’em too, and at a faster rate than they give ’em up — but oswalt and clemens figure not to get tagged all that often.

the same cannot be said for the houston bullpen, which coughs up taters prodigiously. dan micelli (who otherwise pitched very well) gave up 10 in 77 innings. a pitcher named d wheeler (don’t know 1st name) allowed 10 in 65 ip. mike gallo: 12 in 49 ip; c harville: 8 in 53. cumulatively, that’s a dinger ev’y six innings. so the cards will need to work deep counts in the early innings and tire starters out before the 7th; that’ll give them five or six outs to work on the soft part of the bullpen.

the last three or four outs though belong to brad lidge, who struck out 157 guys in 94 innings and had a 1.90 era. he allowed the cardinals one lonely hit in 9-plus innings of work against them this year.

the cards catch a break in the rotation pairings, as clemens and oswalt both pitched twice in round 1 and thus will not appear until games 3 and 4 here. if they make subsequent starts, they’ll have to do so on short rest in games 6 and 7. journeymen brad backe and pete munro (4.30 and 5.15 eras, respectively) will divide the three remaining starts. when clemens does start, expect roger cedeno to be in left field — he’s a lifetime 10 for 23 against the rocket with 6 walks. scott rolen has touched clemens for 2 homers in 12 career at-bats, and tony womack’s a lifetime 4 for 10; but jim edmonds hits just .205 against him, pujols .222, renteria .235. the roster’s combined career avg v clemens: .226.

and just .244 v roy oswalt, though pujols (.344) and renteria (.320) do hit him.

no cardinal pitcher can boast such domination against the astros. on the contrary, hou hitters appear to be pretty comfortable against all our starters — combined career avg of .299 v williams, .281 v morris, .299 v suppan, .341 v marquis ……. these are really alarming numbers. this season, at least, both morris and williams pitched reasonably well against houston — they’ll starts games 1-2 and 5-6 against houston’s weakest pitchers, backe and munro.

nonetheless, micro numbers make clear that houston possesses the bats and the arms to win the series; no question about it. st louis will have to keep the ball in the park, limit hou to solo shots, maybe outslug them 8-6 once or twice. because the stros rely so heavily on oswalt and clemens, the pressure will really be on that tandem; if the cards steal just one win against either pitcher they likely win the series. houston meanwhile would probably be thrilled with a win in just one of the three munro - backe starts.

and what am i predicting? matt morris wins the clincher at home in game 6 vs a fading clemens. as much as the matchups seem to favor the astros, you can’t ignore the macro statistical markers — particularly when they’re as skewed to one side as they are here. houston will put up some runs, but the cards can score a little too. stl pitchers, underestimated all year, have generally risen to the occasion, and the bar is not high; all they need to do is grind out six innings, keep card bats within striking distance, then turn it over to the bullpen.

Matchup: Cards LA

2004-10-05T06:22:00.000-06:00

cardinals finish the season a major-league best 105-57. they scored the most runs in the league (855) and allowed the least (659), and even set the pace in "defensive efficiency ratio," ie the percentage of batted balls converted into outs. led the loop in assorted other statistical categories as well, and ranked among the top three or four in most ev’ything else. they enter the playoffs with only one chink in the statistical armor: 169 homers allowed, 7th-best in the league.

could be trouble — their first-round opponent, the dodgers, swatted 203 homers, 4th best in nl. but l.a. offense does not impress overall — just 9th in runs scored, 10th in batting average, 8th in both on-base and slugging. and their pitchers will have their own problems keeping the cards in the park — they allowed 178 homers, 10th in the league; also 4th in era, 6th in runs allowed. the cards outhomered the dodgers 216-203, out-differentialed them 196-77, out-era’d them by a quarter of a run (3.75-4.01); they yielded fewer walks, fewer hits, fewer homers. the dodgers hold only one significant statistical advantage: they committed just 73 errors (leading the league) to the cards’ 97.

by the numbers, it should not be a difficult matchup for the cards; nearly every leading indicator forecasts victory. however, they enter the postseason without their best pitcher (chris carpenter, lost to an unusual nerve ailment) and with bruises and scrapes plaguing scott rolen, steve kline, tony womack, and albert pujols. so the playoff health hex remains alive and well. a second starting pitcher, matt morris, is less healthy than he lets on; finally admits to a tender shoulder after a frightfully inconsistent season in which he failed to pitch out of the third inning on half a dozen or so occasions. as it was entering the regular season, the starting pitching is a big question mark: will it be good enough? of the four pitchers they will throw at l.a., three (morris suppan and williams) had era’s over 4.00; jason marquis set the pace at 3.71. all four of them allowed more than a hit per inning.

again, though, the dodger offense appears ill-equipped to attack these exposed flanks. and they have exposed flanks of their own, beginning w lame-armed ace brad penny, who ironically has the same nerve thing that ails stl ace carpenter. the dodgers do have perhaps the best starter in the series, odalis perez, who compiled a 3.25 era and a 44-128 walk-k ratio. but he didn’t throw any cgs and, thanks to unlucky bullpen support, finished with just 7 wins (v 6 losses). their two other starters, jeff weaver and jose lima, are as hittable as the cards’ starters, though weaver has the profile of a good postseason performer (220 innings, 153 ks, only 19 hr allowed). none of the three won more than 13 games.

perez and weaver will pitch two games apiece, giving l.a. a slight advantage in the rotations. but the bullpen edge goes to the cards, who as a group yielded a very impressive 73 fewer hits than innings pitched (290 h in 363 ip) and only 26 hr. remove gopher-prone cal eldred from the equation and that hr ratio is 15 allowed in 296 ip. these are comforting stats, suggesting the cards are well-armed for the type of tight wins the postseason demands. but the dodgers have the game’s most unhittable closer, greg gagne, and a capable bullpen corps of their own. the cards did stumble down the stretch, going 13-13 in their last 26 games; but l.a. finished in an 11-11 funk that nearly cost them their playoff berth. i think the cards can and will take them.

btw, the scariest nl team in the tournament is also the least likely and probably least deserving — the astros, who snuck in as the wild card. they took forever to get their act together, were under .500 as late as early august but finished with a torrid six weeks to get to 92 wins. they have two dominating starters, roger clemens and roy oswalt, and an explosive lineup; they swept the cardinals two weeks ago and will likely face them again in the nlcs, after dispatching the braves. astros are about as mediocre statistically as you can be — finished between 6th and 9th in nearly ev’y key category, led the league in nothing, indeed finished top 4 in almost nothing. but nobody wants to play them this month.

x-factor: "astros" is an anagram for "ass rot."